After watching films like “Nightcrawler” and “Spotlight,” I’ve been faced with a conundrum of late. Surprisingly enough, I plan on being a journalist, and, as a young person, I went into the profession with a lot of ideals with what the industry should be like. The troubling thing is: Everything is proving me wrong in this modern age.
As far as multimedia journalism is concerned, sensationalism is more the name of the game than ever. And everyone is just so obsessed with getting the best scoop and reporting on it first instead of correctly. Ratings lead networks to believe that if you’re last, you’re dead in the water, mostly because it seems no one cares about having the information right at first as long as it’s not late. It’s OK; the audience can take the high horse later on and point the finger at CNN, Fox or what have you after the fact for being wrong even though that’s what the populace demanded in the first place.
It seems like, to me, that the only sanctuary for true, investigative journalism is print news. But now, that’s taking more hits than ever before. Of course I’m thankful that we have a movie like “Spotlight” shedding light on how desperate reporters and papers are nowadays for more funds and resources to power the watchdog machine that made the story in “Spotlight,” for instance, possible.
Now, we gravitate more to entertainment news for sure. Less people seem to be concerned with holding big government and corporations accountable for the rights of all people. Instead, the millennials and the generations that are following especially seem to only be concerned with the latest trends in pop culture and what 10 best places there are to go over spring break. Reading this type of thing would be OK if we all would pay attention to the big picture too. The thing is: Fewer and fewer of us do it seems.
In our online world, we now have the ability to read, watch and listen to all kinds of news. We should be encouraging competition in every medium of news now. Print, TV, radio and online media should all be flourishing because we should be constantly challenging ourselves to be more open-minded and informed than ever before.
Instead, a lot of us box ourselves in into reading stuff that only reaffirms our beliefs or lifestyle. Old papers are dying and journalists can no longer be the effective watchdog that we once were. Online mediocrity is thriving though and people seem to be in love with style more than substance and talent today. Maybe, in my opinion, we really should think about what media and news we’re consuming and if it will really have an impact on not only us, but the greater civilization that we must live with every day as well.
