The world of journalism has a wide range of roles ranging from just photographers to producers and writers.
Reporter
A reporter will gather information, conduct interviews and write articles or reports on various topics, or on a dedicated topic depending on who they work for. They can work in many different types of news such as politics, sports, entertainment, etc.
Editor
Editor is one of the most important roles in journalism. They will review and refine the content produced by reporters. Their job is to ensure accuracy and clarity, essentially making it so what ever it put out is accurate and good enough for people to read.
Photographer/Videographer
Photographers and Videographers are there to capture photo or video to complement stories. Adding this level of media makes the story more entertaining and/or informative.
Investigative Journalist
Investigative Journalists go deep into topics, often spending hour and hours researching to uncover hidden information or a lot of the time wrongdoing. The role revolves around delving into major stories of national or international importance and often concerning matters of public interest. This makes the role a highly respected role and one of the major jobs within the world of journalism.
Columnist/Opinion writer
Columnists express their opinions or analysis on current events or specific subjects. They can be quite controversial at times as everyone has different opinions.
News Presenter
News anchors are people who present news on television or radio, often in a studio, summarizing stories and conducting interviews. This is how many people hear about news stories and other things going on in the world so this is an extremely important job which should be done correctly.
Within journalism there is also many other sort of “activities” that are part of many of the roles above.
Research
Journalists conduct extensive research to gather information, make sure facts are accurate and then understand the context of the story they are reporting on.
Interviews
They conduct interviews with sources and questions that they have gathered beforehand and then gather information from the interview for quotes and also firsthand information to include in their reports.
Writing/Editing
Journalists write articles, scripts, or reports focusing on clarity, accuracy and engaging storytelling. All of this is crucial to get people talking to bring more attention towards the paper, station or media in general.
Fact-Checking
Verifying information through multiple sources is a crucial to make sure that the accuracy and credibility of the context. This is usually the job of the editor.
Ethics
Journalists have to follow ethical standards which include objectivity, fairness and avoiding conflicts of interest. This is extremely important to journalism in order to keep their integrity or impartiality.
Bias in journalism is extremely important and can influence the presentation of the information given. These are the many different forms of bias you may find in media:
Political
When reporters or media outlets favour and are against particular political parties or candidates it is called political bias. This can lead to wrong information or missing out parts of information to instead favour or go against their own political ideologies.
Confirmation Bias
Journalists may seek or interpret information unconsciously that confirms their existing beliefs, which then leads to ignoring contradictory evidence.
Commercial Bias
Economic interest, issues or pleasing a advertiser and corporate affiliations can impact the coverage of certain topics.
There is many ways to eliminate bias within media such as:
Diverse Sourcing
Ensuring information is gathered from diverse sources representing various point of views to have a balanced view.
Fact-Checking
Making sure to verify facts and cross-check your information with multiple reliable sources to avoid errors or misleading information. This can always by simply just checking there is multiple sources to back up what your point is.
Editorial Oversight
When engaging with editors, colleagues or in our case other students to review content, them providing feedback to detect and rectify any biases you may have missed.
Transparency
Clearly disclose any potential conflicts of interest or your own personal biases to maintain transparency and an overall good relationship with your audience.
Training and Awareness
Training and making your self aware of ethical reporting can help journalists recognize and eliminate bias.
Here are 3 stories I found from the Telegraph and Argus.
After looking at the stories on the main T&A page, I realised a lot of the stories were very sad and shocking. I think this is so people are shocked by the news so they share it around and show friends and family which results in more readers of the T&A. The large majority of stories on the website are heavily negative.
The types of stories that are being covered are deaths, drug abuse, vandalism, closure of streets and services. These are all things that get people worried or concerned therefore they share on their social medias and when friends and family see it they relate to it more because someone they know posted it.
My subject will be the decline of radio. I think this is really interesting because of how radio used to be the tiktok of older generations and is significantly less popular now.
From the graph above you can see that more and more people don’t want to discover new music/new artists which I believe is because of the growth of spotify and other music streaming services. People tend to stick to the music they already know, so if they have a platform like spotify which uses playlists to put all the music you already like together, you are less likely to branch out into new songs, artists or even new genres. It is also more applealing that the apps are on-demand and usually ad free so it would make more sense to listen alternative ways to radio. The popularity of podcasts on streaming services have also surged. This majorly challenged radio’s dominance in spoken contnent.
The rise of digital media platforms, streaming services, podcasts and personalized music streaming apps (such as spotify) has provided audiences with alternative options for consuming music and podcasts. This shift has altered the way people see music and listen to other types of news and entertainment. This seemed to be one of the major factors towards the slow decline of radio.
Another issue is that the younger audiences specifically, have shown more of a preference towards on-demand content and customization experiences, moving away from scheduled programming such as TV and traditional radio.
As audiences have switch from radio to digital content, so have advertisers. This makes the advertising revenue for radio much less than it once was and has made a massive struggle for many smaller stations to stay on air.
Finally, as vehicles and devices have become more connected, people now have access to streaming services and their own playlists directly from their cars or smart devices, reducing the use of radio for entertainment during commutes or leisure time.