Journalism And Truth

Looking at how journalism has changed over time, this book explores how the long-standing and untrustworthy conventions developed. It examines why reliable standards of objectivity and accuracy are critical not just to a free press but to the democratic society it informs and serves. It offers an account of how journalism and truth work.

Truth qualities of journalism are under intense scrutiny in today's world. Journalistic scandals have eroded public confidence in mainstream media while pioneering news media compete to satisfy the public's appetite for news. Still worse is the specter of "fake news" that looms over media and political systems that underpin everything from social stability to global governance. This volume aims to illuminate the contentious media landscape to help journalism students, scholars, and professionals understand contemporary conditions and arm them to deal with a spectrum of new developments ranging from technology and politics to best practices. Fake news is among the greatest of these concerns, and can encompass everything from sarcastic or ironic humor to bot-generated, made-up stories. It can also include the pernicious transmission of selected, biased facts, the use of incomplete or misleadingly selective framing of stories, and photographs that editorially convey certain characteristics. This edited volume contextualizes the current "fake news problem." Yet it also offers a larger perspective on what seems to be uniquely modern, computer-driven problems. We must remember that we have lived with the problem of people having to identify, characterize, and communicate the truth about the world around them for millennia. Rather than identify a single culprit for disseminating misinformation, this volume examines how news is perceived and identified, how news is presented to the public, and how the public responds to news. It considers social media's effect on the craft of journalism, as well as the growing role of algorithms, big data, and automatic content-production regimes. As an edited collection, this volume gathers leading scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies, philosophy, and the social sciences to address critical questions of how we should understand journalism's changing landscape as it relates to fundamental questions about the role of truth and information in society.

Former executive editor of The New York Times and one of our most eminent journalists Jill Abramson provides a “valuable and insightful” (The Boston Globe) report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade, as shown via two legacy (The New York Times and The Washington Post) and two upstart (BuzzFeed and VICE) companies as they plow through a revolution that pits old vs. new media. “A marvelous book” (The New York Times Book Review), Merchants of Truth is the groundbreaking and gripping story of the precarious state of the news business. The new digital reality nearly kills two venerable newspapers with an aging readership while creating two media behemoths with a ballooning and fickle audience of millennials. “Abramson provides this deeply reported insider account of an industry fighting for survival. With a keen eye for detail and a willingness to interrogate her own profession, Abramson takes readers into the newsrooms and boardrooms of the legacy newspapers and the digital upstarts that seek to challenge their dominance” (Vanity Fair). We get to know the defenders of the legacy presses as well as the outsized characters who are creating the new speed-driven media competitors. The players include Jeff Bezos and Marty Baron (The Washington Post), Arthur Sulzberger and Dean Baquet (The New York Times), Jonah Peretti (BuzzFeed), and Shane Smith (VICE) as well as their reporters and anxious readers. Merchants of Truth raises crucial questions that concern the well-being of our society. We are facing a crisis in trust that threatens the free press. “One of the best takes yet on journalism’s changing fortunes” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Abramson’s book points us to the future.

This book bridges a gap between discussions about truth, human understanding, and epistemology in philosophical circles, and debates about objectivity, bias, and truth in journalism. It examines four major philosophical theories in easy to understand terms while maintaining a critical insight which is fundamental to the contemporary study of journalism. The book aims to move forward the discussion of truth in the news media by dissecting commonly used concepts such as bias, objectivity, balance, fairness, in a philosophically-grounded way, drawing on in depth interviews with journalists to explore how journalists talk about truth.

Amidst "alternative facts" and "post-truth" politics, news journalism is more important and complex than ever. This book examines journalism's evolution within digital media's ecosystem where lies often spread faster than truth, and consumers expect conversations, not lectures. Tthe 2016 U.S. presidential election delivered a stunning result, but the news media's breathless coverage of it was no surprise. News networks turned debates into primetime entertainment, reporters spent more time covering poll results than public policy issues, and the cozy relationship between journalists and political insiders helped ensure intrigue and ratings, even as it eroded journalism's role as democracy's "Fourth Estate." Against this sobering backdrop, a broadcast news veteran and a millennial newshound consider how journalism can regain the public's trust by learning from pioneers both within and beyond the profession. Connecting the dots between faux news, "fake news," and real news, coauthors Madison and DeJarnette provide an unflinching analysis of where mainstream journalism went wrong—and what the next generation of reporters can do to make it right. The significance of Donald Trump's presidency is not lost on the authors, but Reimagining Journalism in a Post-Truth World is not a post-mortem of the 2016 presidential election, nor is it a how-to guide for reporting on Trump's White House. Instead, this accessible and engaging book offers a broader perspective on contemporary journalism, pairing lively anecdotes with insightful analysis of long-term trends and challenges. Drawing on their expertise in media innovation and entrepreneurship, the authors explore how comedians like John Oliver, Trevor Noah, and Samantha Bee are breaking (and reshaping) the rules of political journalism; how legacy media outlets like The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The New York Times are retooling for the digital age; and how newcomers like Vice, Hearken, and De Correspondent are innovating new models for reporting and storytelling. Anyone seeking to make sense of modern journalism and its intersections with democracy will want to read this book.

"Think of what revitalizing journalism would do for the cause of Christ in America! It is the most needed sort of pre-evangelism; it is training in Christian worldview; it is an aid to sanctification, and you need to teach people how to do it." --J. I. Packer to Marvin Olasky Telling the Truth is Dr. Olasky's valuable response to this charge from the noted theologian. In it he emphasizes both the philosophical and the practical: detailing the need for Christian journalists to have a well developed worldview, and giving essential instruction to help them hone their writing, editing, and interviewing skills. The shortcomings of modern journalism are many. Too often evangelical publications, instead of exhibiting the journalistic excitement of the hunt, are content printing public-relations releases and carrying on their business in a joyless manner. But it doesn't have to be this way. Indeed, as Christians, it must not be this way! We are called to excellence; to do our work in such a way that it glorifies the Creator Himself. This incisive book not only urges journalists to grasp the significance of their purpose but also shows them how to more effectively accomplish it. As Olasky says, "If even fifty new, talented, biblically directed journalists were to emerge in America during the next few years, the revitalization of Christian journalism would be well under way."

Rumours of the death of investigative journalism have been greatly exaggerated. This book is proof enough of that. Examples from the corporate and alternative media across the globe highlight the many imaginative and courageous ways that reporters are still "kicking at the right targets". Edited by - and contributed to - by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, the burden of the book is both how much more important investigative journalism is in an age of so much disinformation, and what techniques and approaches are needed now in a fast-changing information world. In his Foreword, Peter Taylor, the award-winning reporter who has been covering terrorism and political violence for 45 years, says of investigative journalism: "It makes headlines, sells newspapers, gets viewing figures and tells the public things they do not know but have a right to know. It speaks truth to power."Donal MacIntyre, another award-winning reporter and documentary director, hails the Channel4/Observer Cambridge Analytica probe, in his Afterword, for confronting "the most significant threat to democracy in the last 50 years".Brian Winston takes us on a whistle-stop history of investigative journalism from as far back as the fifth century BCE. Rachel Oldroyd argues that if long-term investigative journalism serves the public then the public should be persuaded to pay for it. And Mark Daly tells of his many attempts to get at the truth over the killing of Stephen Lawrence 25 years ago. James Oliver, of the BBC's flagship investigative series, Panorama, highlights the ways in which journalism is rapidly changing. Just a few years ago, leaks would be handed over discreetly in a smoke-filled pub or arrive suddenly in a parcel through the post. Now, you'd need a lorry for the number of documents involved. A big one.The second section puts the spotlight on international cases. Tatenda Chitagu reports on how a brave tradition of reporting survives - just - in Zimbabwe. Hanna Liubakova shows how journalists in Belarus are finding ways to circumvent censors. Antonio Castillo focuses on Ojo Público (Public Eyes), the Peruvian muckraker, which has revolutionised Latin American investigative journalism. The best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winner, David Cay Johnston, argues that the most important scandals are right in front of the journalists but - for reasons that he explains - they often miss them. And Richard Lance Keeble examines in depth the work of the Australian activist journalist Antony Loewenstein.

In July 1997, twenty-five of America's most influential journalists sat down to try and discover what had happened to their profession in the years between Watergate and Whitewater. What they knew was that the public no longer trusted the press as it once had. They were keenly aware of the pressures that advertisers and new technologies were putting on newsrooms around the country. But, more than anything, they were aware that readers, listeners, and viewers — the people who use the news — were turning away from it in droves. There were many reasons for the public's growing lack of trust. On television, there were the ads that looked like news shows and programs that presented gossip and press releases as if they were news. There were the "docudramas," television movies that were an uneasy blend of fact and fiction and which purported to show viewers how events had "really" happened. At newspapers and magazines, celebrity was replacing news, newsroom budgets were being slashed, and editors were pushing journalists for more "edge" and "attitude" in place of reporting. And, on the radio, powerful talk personalities led their listeners from sensation to sensation, from fact to fantasy, while deriding traditional journalism. Fact was blending with fiction, news with entertainment, journalism with rumor. Calling themselves the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the twenty-five determined to find how the news had found itself in this state. Drawn from the committee's years of intensive research, dozens of surveys of readers, listeners, viewers, editors, and journalists, and more than one hundred intensive interviews with journalists and editors, The Elements of Journalism is the first book ever to spell out — both for those who create and those who consume the news — the principles and responsibilities of journalism. Written by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, two of the nation's preeminent press critics, this is one of the most provocative books about the role of information in society in more than a generation and one of the most important ever written about news. By offering in turn each of the principles that should govern reporting, Kovach and Rosenstiel show how some of the most common conceptions about the press, such as neutrality, fairness, and balance, are actually modern misconceptions. They also spell out how the news should be gathered, written, and reported even as they demonstrate why the First Amendment is on the brink of becoming a commercial right rather than something any American citizen can enjoy. The Elements of Journalism is already igniting a national dialogue on issues vital to us all. This book will be the starting point for discussions by journalists and members of the public about the nature of journalism and the access that we all enjoy to information for years to come.