CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES: (Lecture) Critical Journalism

Today's lecture was focused more on news and for the people doing the news essay question but as the current topic is news, it benefited all of us. 

- The audience have fragmented i.e. seek out info and entertainment for a variety of sources other than TV

- The audience itself is becoming a new source of content e.g. you tubers, bloggers and bloggers

- Interactivity and self scheduling has given an active involvement to a previously relativity passive audience 

Social media

- Inter-connectivity - info speed/flow

the rise of ‘post truth’

- Are we really getting a good deal from any of them - who can we really trust to inform us?

- The idea of post truth is that we no longer rely on actual facts and info, but rather are used to being deb a diet of opinion and personal beliefs i.e. rhetoric

- Does the rise of citizen journalism really do anything to place us closer to the facts?

Facebook “spreading” fake news

Is anything really trustworthy?

- Has the rise in trivia and self scheduling resulted in a world in which we are potentially in touch with more info than ever, but in fact actually find out less and less because we only choose to find out re-affirm what we already believe?

‘I Shot 2013’ - ITV, 2014

- This was a documentary about the most extraordinary events throughout the year of 2013. We witness people bringing out their phones and cameras to record the events. Is this right? Instead of helping the injured, people are delving straight to their phones. 

How ethical is it to witness, record and then distribute content when you are not a professional?

- Filming disasters may help find the culprit but also people may need medical attention and people are sat there on their phones filming it instead of helping

- Boston marathon - wrong person got identified as culprit from unprofessional people with mobile footage/ended up killing himself - but police/investigators managed to get evidence and get the right person from mobile footage