Since 1919

The Prairie News

Since 1919

The Prairie News

Since 1919

The Prairie News

Reporter’s ego traces back to company standards

Reporter%E2%80%99s+ego+traces+back+to+company+standards

Journalists around the country have been in an uproar since the revelations about Brian Williams and his retracted statements about an incident in 2003 where he claimed he had been in a helicopter that was shot down by an enemy RPG. Some talk show hosts have taken shots at Williams with jokes and skits, such as Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show, who said, “We look at our relationship with war and revisit the movie ‘Black Hawk Down,’ or, as Brian Williams calls it, ‘The Brian Williams Story.’”

 

The fact of the matter is this situation is not one for joking. It is a slap in the face of journalism and journalists everywhere.

 

Williams’ ego has outgrown him and his job as a reporter. He seems to have lost sight of what his job truly is, to serve the public with unbiased and accurate information. He should not shoulder all the blame, though. The real struggle and the real problem in journalism today are the mainstream media and the everlasting struggle for ratings dominance, plain and simple.

 

Journalism has recently become so convoluted and weighed down with the constant badgering of one political ideology against another. The fact that we now see a particular type of journalism as “too left wing” or “part of the liberal media” is baffling because real journalism is neither. Journalism has become an outright ratings war.

 

The fact that Fox News, MSNBC and CNN spend more time trying to attack each other or be first to a news story has impacted the general public’s trust in the media. According to a Gallup poll from 2014, Americans’ trust in the mass media to “report the news fully, accurately, and fairly” had matched an all-time low from 2012 with only 40 percent of Americans trusting the product media giants, or the media overall, was producing. To add to that, in the same poll, only 36 percent of people believed the news was reported without bias. This overall decline in the trust of the mass media, which has been declining since a peak of 55 percent in 1999, has also taken a hit on media giants. Combined, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC saw a five percent drop in ratings during the daytime from 2013 and a four percent drop in the primetime ratings.

 

Among the 25 to 54 demographic, the networks saw an eight percent drop during the day and a five percent drop in primetime. To put those numbers into even more perspective and emphasize the drop, Fox News had a 13 percent drop in 2013 and a 30 percent drop in the 25 to 54 demographic.

 

With the expansion of the internet and the general public becoming generally fed up with the mainstream media, people have begun to find new sources of information. The public as a whole isn’t stupid and they know when the wool is trying to be pulled over their eyes. New independent news sources have taken advantage of the new waves of technology and are striving to correct the wrongs of the media giants.

 

Websites like YouTube have given rise to new independent news sources, such as The Young Turks and VICE News, whose channels dominate the likes of Fox News and CNN. It’s a trend that will lead to the media giants’ demise unless they decide to do something about it. They need widespread change, and that comes down to not only the stories they report, but the way they report those stories. Let’s be honest, who wants to hear about a missing jet for three weeks when there are widespread protests in not only the Ukraine, but here in the United States. Journalists should not analyze the protests from a closed point of view.

 

Yes, Brian Williams messed up. He over-exaggerated a story and stuck with it for more than ten years, but he is not the only one at fault. Bill O’Reilly over-exaggerates, or underestimates, problems in this country all the time. It isn’t only him either. He has numerous colleagues that do so as well, and his counterparts at MSNBC and CNN are also guilty of this.

 

One has to begin to think though, is it completely all their doing, or is there someone in the background waving a checkbook. The corporations as a whole are at fault, not just the reporters, because they let these problems persist just to win a fickle ratings battle based on ego and to put a little more money in their coffers.

 

 

Leave a Comment
More to Discover

Comments (0)

All The PRAIRIE Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *