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[Music] Journalism is the gathering, reporting, and dissemination of news and information in the public interest, and it covers almost everything.
Explores what journalism is, who qualifies as a journalist, and the evolving definitions in the digital age.
Key Takeaways
- Journalism is evolving with digital participation beyond traditional journalists.
- Standards and quality in journalism remain essential despite broader participation.
- The definition of who is a journalist is no longer clear-cut.
- New contributors should be included in conversations about journalism's future.
- Protections for journalists may need to be reconsidered in light of new media roles.
What the video covers
- Journalism involves gathering, reporting, and disseminating news in the public interest.
- Traditionally, journalists were identified by their employment, education, or membership in professional bodies.
- The internet has expanded participation in journalism beyond traditional categories.
- Non-traditional contributors like bloggers now engage in acts of journalism.
- Despite broader participation, maintaining standards and quality remains crucial.
- There is a need to include new participants in discussions about journalism's future.
- Questions arise about whether new actors deserve the same protections as traditional journalists.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Now, it used to be that we could always tell who a journalist was because there are traditional views about who is a journalist, and journalists have been identified as being people either who are working for a media organization,
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working in the former job of a journalist, or someone who's been trained specifically and gone through a college education in journalism. So they've got some sort of qualification, or journalists have been identified as people who are members of a professional
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association or a journalist union. And so these have been the ways in which we've been able to identify journalists in the past. That's not so easy these days. Today, thanks to the internet, we've got much more participation in
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the work of journalism and in journalism itself by people who are not falling into these traditional categories.
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But it's important to say that although the broad spectrum of who is working in journalism may involve people who do blogging and other things, although you might say the door is open to far more people being engaged in
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journalism, that does not dilute the importance of standards and quality in the work that's being done. Many more people today may not be journalists, but they do commit acts of journalism, and it seems to us that we have to bring them
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into the conversation. We have to make them part of our discussion about the future of journalism. And we have to ask ourselves whether or not these people also deserve the same protections that are available to traditional journalists and people who have hitherto
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been regarded as professional journalists themselves.
Topics:journalismjournalistmedia ethicsdigital journalismmedia standardsbloggingjournalist protectionsmedia evolutionethical journalismjournalism education
