Media practitioners should focus more on making their craft consistent than on coming up with new buzzwords @momblogger

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In recent weeks we've seen jargon like "social news network", "online journalist", "citizen journalists", and "crowdsourcing" coming into the quaint lingo of some "media practitioners" (hey, there's another one!). None of these are clearly defined in the context of the practice of journalism and, more importantly, none of these have added any significant clarity to the "debate" around the role of these media people in our overall journey towards becoming a more just society.

For me it is quite simple. There are only three operational classes that describe how an information channel can operate:

(1) Provide information

(2) Seek to influence

(3) Peddle influence

News reporters do Item 1, columnists do Item 2, and publicists do Item 3.

A "media practitioner" or channel can be one or a combination of the above three.

How much more complicated can it be?

The thing I find quite amusing about people like Maria Ressa and Chay Hofileña (and all these "media consultants") is the way they muddle what is really a simple landscape with their quaint buzzwords but balk at providing insight into what they say when asked. Ressa, for example, once responded to commentary by screaming "Libel!". When asked who is funding Rappler, the silence was deafening. You gotta wonder.

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 1, 2012 at 1:56 PM

    "The ultimate result of a newspaper’s lack of sobriety is the debasement of journalistic language. Matthew Arnold once wrote that journalism is literature in a hurry. By that, he was not exempting journalists and news reporters from one of the basic requirements of literature – refined and uplifting language. Many newspapers today have helped attenuate and flatten journalism by their use of gutter language prevalent in Internet blogs. When accuracy and refinement are sacrificed for the sake of marketability, newspapers and other mainstream media cease to be a powerful instrument of transmitting truth, but of articulate ignorance, inarticulate tribal emotions, reckless passions, and subtle deception." - UST Rector Fr. Rolando de la Rosa, OP
    http://mb.com.ph/articles/347332/sobriety-truth-restraint-media

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 1, 2012 at 2:13 PM

    "Does Rappler practice online journalism or online terrorism?... it appears that by its sensationalist and abusive journalism, Rappler, which rhymes with robber, views itself as accountable only to online commerce." - The Varsitarian Editorial (Jan 27, 2012)

    Read on... http://www.varsitarian.net/editorial_opinion/editorial/20120123/online_terrorism

    ReplyDelete

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