Many newspapers and television news channels are owned by larger companies. For example, ABC is owned by Disney. So, what are the odds that ABC news programs will report anything negative about their company? Probably close to zero. Likewise, NBC is owned by General Electric. Bill Kovach, the author of one of our textbooks, also sees problems with such mergers according to an interview I found. He fears that companies such as Disney and General Electric do not put the same value on journalists being the "watch dog" of the large companies in the private sector as they traditionally have been. Situations like these put journalists in a tough spot. It is their responsibility to report the wrongdoings of large companies to the public, but when the same large companies own the news source, journalists might think twice about what they are reporting. Journalists are having to pick between being loyal to the people and being loyal to their parent companies which often means keeping their job or not. Thus, I do not think large companies should be able to own news sources.
Even if news sources are independent of large companies, they are still loyalty problems that arise from the advertising side of journalism. Newspapers and television news needs to be profitable to survive and the way to make money is with advertising. However, this means that news companies feel that they cannot report anything that would hurt any of the companies that by advertising space. Thus, another loyalty comes up. Should we be more loyal to the advertisers or the people? The answer is still the PEOPLE. We discussed in class the concept of "the wall." We talked about the five "bricks" needed for such a wall do be built and keep journalists loyal to the people. The are:
1. The owner must be committed to the citizen first.
2. Hire business managers who also put citizens first.
3. Set and communicate clear standards with the company.
4. Journalists have final say over the news.
5. Communicate clear standards to the public.
When followed, these guidelines could be extremely helpful. However, the world isn't perfect. Thus, it seems we will be fighting a never-ending battle to keep journalism loyal to the people.
Another interesting question of loyalty deals with loyalty to one's country. An article from the Digital Journalist discusses this issue. Should journalists reveal secret government information to the public? Is it more important to tell the public everything? Or should some things be kept secret especially if it helps the country win a war? One of my classmates, Allison Goett shared her opinion on this issue in one of her last blog posts. She talked about how having a father who is a disabled veteran influenced her opinion that journalists should consider the effects of revealing certain information might have on the soldiers before they leak secret government information. In such an age of technology, she brings up the point that all the information we read or see in news media is also fully available to our enemies. Allison makes an interesting point that I definitely agree with.
I guess what I have been trying to say throughout this entire post is that loyalty is a tricky thing. While I do believe, journalists should first be loyal to the people, there are so many issues that play into this loyalty. There is a ton of gray area with such an issue and unfortunately, it will be this way for a long time.
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