Does Journalism Still Matter?

By: Kyle Tavella

 Shudson argues that professional journalism no matter how rare it is to find will

always be the journalism that still matters, because it is the journalism that we can

trust, and the journalism that remains dedicated to the truth no matter who or what

political party it affects. An example I found to be very interesting is a story that he

brings up about one of his colleagues who wrote a story regarding an executive action

that former President Donald Trump tried to sign into law, which would’ve prohibited

travel to the United States by Muslims from 9 predominantly Muslim countries, this

executive order was called illegal and blocked by a circuit court judge in Hawaii, and

what I found so interesting was his choice of words describing his colleagues' story, he

says “Pena presents this news in a flat, emotionless prose” (page 15) he goes on to say

that this is what readers should be looking for to know if a story is professional objective

journalism. The word “emotionless” got my attention and resonates with me because in

today's socially accepted journalism that word does not matter as much as it should, a

reporter or newscaster should remain emotionless to gain credibility, because if not

then they have lost it right away. I remember turning on CNN on the day that President

Joe Biden was declared to have won the 2020 election, and what I saw was shockingly

bad journalism; I saw reporter crying tears of joy, and breaking down on national

television because Donald Trump was no longer the President, and I voted for Joe Biden

and I was not a fan of Donald Trump, but when it comes to broadcasting the news to

millions of Americans, it must come across as emotionless or it can’t be fully trusted

even if the news that is being reported is 100% true. Now more than ever we as a

society need to recognize the trustworthy from the untrustworthy in the mainstream

media, even though this may be very difficult because most news outlets have a political

bias nowadays, and it can be very frustrating at times when all we want to do is be

informed about the current issues that we as a country face, but instead we have to

listen to journalists go on rants about their political party. Journalism is how we as

Americans become informed, and if we are being fed false information from a source

that we are supposed to trust that means we as Americans are behind the curve,

especially in a democracy like the one that we have worked so hard to build and

maintain, where every voice matters, every vote counts, and a vote is determined by an

opinion, and those opinions are formed from the sources we have been told we can

always trust, but what happens when that is not the case? We have seen time and time

again what a campaign of misinformation can lead to, and it is always very bad.

According to Letter.ly “According to a 2021 survey, 53% of people worldwide still trust

the media. While this is more than half the world’s population, it’s a significant decrease

from 61% in 2020. Most people (61%) cite the lack of objectivity as the main reason for

their loss of trust. Furthermore, 59% say that news organizations exaggerate or entirely

fabricate information to support their ideology.” “Milos Djordjevic, Letter.ly ‘27

alarming fake news statistics’ April 1st, 2021”. Reading that stat closely I recognized and

took away one word specifically, and that word is “Objectivity” which is a word that
Michael Shudson uses very frequently to describe professional journalism. The

dictionary definition of Objectivity is “the quality or character of being objective: lack of

favoritism toward one side or another: freedom from bias.”, and it makes perfect sense

when a statistic like that is presented when 61% of people say the lack of objectivity is

the main reason for their distrust you know that’s the underlying problem. How do we

go about fixing that though? I believe the answer is in the question, this is a problem

that won’t be swayed by outside distrust, it is a problem that needs internal recognition

at these news outlets, they are the ones who need to be more objective, and less

emotional and so easily swayed one direction or the other. I think that it is incredibly

disheartening and sad to see how far journalism has strayed away from what it was

invented to do, Shudson puts it very beautifully, and this is a point I made earlier, but he

says “Journalism in itself is among the institutions necessary to uphold and sustain such

fragile thing like our democracy, specifically journalism empowered by legally protected

freedom of the press to pursue the news coverage that matters to democracy” (page

21, Why Journalism Still Matters). He mentioned something that I was about to get into

and that is the First Amendment that states Freedom of the Press, the founding fathers

knew that a free and supported press is vital to a thriving democracy, there are many

famous quotes and thoughts given to us by the founding fathers that are very important

in their way, but this quote from one of the most influential person in American history I

think is one of the most important quotes given to us by Thomas Jefferson “The press,
confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false

reasonings and opinions, on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be

drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing

licentiousness.”. Jefferson said this and it is still relevant today, he motioned that the

public would correct and judge any false news, he knew that the people of this country

were going to uphold the integrity of the Press for as long as they live. While researching

I found another quote, and this one is from Alexander Hamilton and it reads “The liberty

of the press consists, in my idea, in publishing the truth, from good motives and for

justifiable ends, though it reflects on the government, on magistrates, or individuals. If it

is not allowed, it excludes the privilege of canvassing men and our rulers. It is in vain to

say, you may canvass measures. This is impossible without the right of looking to men.”

Which is a point that Shudson made over and over in his book, it does not matter who

the story is about or how it affects them in any way, what matters is simply that it is

released, and going back to what Jefferson said once it is released the public will be the

judge, and they will form their opinions based on the facts presented by a whole, raw,

objective news story. I believe that since 2016 we made a turn, the mainstream media

has always been either liberal or conservative biased, but when Donald Trump became

President, he began to sow a disdain towards to media, he wanted to form a distrust for

the media so anything published about him his supporters would view as false or biased

or fake news. This was a very dangerous precedent given the fact that on more than one
occasion he said the words “The press is the enemy”. Moving on in the future, I don’t

think anyone has a clue to what direction journalism is headed in, but what is known is

that it is rapidly evolving for good and for bad. The internet has become a massive

source of journalism, and it is where many people receive their news from, which has

pros and it also has cons, the pros being that it is so accessible to the point where if

something happens in Syria at noon, I will get a notification on my phone at 12:01

alerting me of the ongoing situation. Furthermore, another pro is that social media has

given a platform for professional objective journalism to thrive, there are thousands of

freelance journalists who aren’t employed by a network of media outlet, so they are no

forced the obey and report by that companies’ biases, they simply report the news the

way that it is intended to be reported. There are also many cons, I think that we are

living through some of the cons right now, that platform that social media gives

journalism whether it is real or false is massive, and if it is real news then it reaches

audiences all over the world instantly, but when its fake news, or false reporting it does

the same thing, and that is a problem. Twitter is one of the most popular social media

sites to exist and anyone can post anything on this site and make it look and sound very

real, when in fact it is completely fabricated, this is where the future of journalism is

headed, and in the next 10 years, I see journalism doing 2 things. One, I think that it will

completely utilize social media and the internet, I think news broadcasting will become

slightly obsolete, I see the future of broadcasting going directly to social media where if
you want to watch the news it will be streamed on your phones or the internet.

Shudson made an excellent point when he said this “Does professional journalism still

have a place in a world where so much communication is online and so much of that

communication on social media, where it is hard for people to keep in mind where their

information comes from? A friend? A friend of a friend? A conventional newspaper or

television or radio station in its online incarnation? Or any number of outrageous efforts

at disinformation and misinformation that also circulated online.” (page 40) It is very

hard to predict where professional journalism will go from here in the next 10 years

because I think the world is becoming more and more unpredictable. I hope to see this

array of disinformation be eliminated, but there is no way of knowing for sure. I think

trying to predict the future of journalism is in some ways a little ignorant on our part.

We can hope and we can work towards a future where journalism can be trusted by

100% of the country no matter what source it comes from. After all, journalism is what

keeps us thriving, it gives us the knowledge we need to keep moving forward.

“Shudson, Michael, ‘Why Journalism Still Matters’, October 22nd, 2018”

“Djordjevic, Milos. ‘27 Alarming Fake News Statistics’, April 1st, 2021,

https://letter.ly/fake-news-statistics”

“Horsman, Alex, ‘Founding Father Quotes on Freedom of Press’

https://ammo.com/articles/first-amendment-quotes-founding-fathers-freedom-of-

speech-freedom-of-press”