Was there ever any doubt that journalism is a noble profession? Certainly not. As noble as the profession has been hailed, it also goes without saying that it is not absolved of any wrong.
When you study journalism it is often ranked among other fields of study like law and medicine. The mere reason being that it is held to a higher standard of ethics than other fraternities.
According to Shapiro(2014), although democracies continue to recognise the need for a clear definition of what journalism is, its definition remains elusive.
Shapiro contends that this is due to its evolving landscape. However, he proposes a functional definition that: ” journalism comprises the activities involved in an independent pursuit of accurate information about current or recent events and its original presentation for public edification.”
According to The Cambridge Dictionary journalism is ” the work of collecting, writing, and publishing news stories and articles in newspapers and magazines or broadcasting them on the radio and television.”
Social media journalism
Much of the debate around the erosion of ethics in journalism premises on the advent of social media platforms and how it has impacted the news ecosystem.
Social media has broadened avenues for news dissemination, bringing about news in real-time (click of a button)/ timely, interactive, accessibility, diversity in news, and democratisation of information.
However, on the downside, there are several emerging concerns noted. Social media journalism is often criticised for its shortfalls regarding verification of information, aiding information disorders, a lack of integrity, inaccurate and unbalanced stories.
A general lack of adherence to the long-standing ethos of traditional journalism in news verification has to a large extent given rise to fake news and sometimes results in chaos and confusion amongst readers.
Additionally, due to the fast nature of news spreading on the socials, journalists’ ability to be credible is often cast in the spotlight.
Because most people consume social media content as gospel truth without questioning it, journalism has therefore come under great scrutiny with some unable to strike differences between sensationalism and hoaxes.
Ethics In The Digital Era
What guides what journalists write each day? When and how to reveal national secrets? The answer is simply ethics. Ideally, ethics are what reporters and editors should refer to in pursuit of truth.
Simply put, ethics are principles that govern/guide journalistic conduct. However, worth noting is that they are neither black or white but in most cases remain a grey area of what transpires from one jurisprudence to another or it may be a case of newsrooms.
Across print and broadcast, several codes of ethics have been developed throughout the world to ensure that journalism is held in the highest regard as possible.
In some instances, newsrooms themselves develop such guidelines/codes to aid reporting. Nevertheless, journalists are mere mortals and have over the years flaunted such, even though that ought not to be the case.
Standard ethical standards entail honesty, integrity, impartiality (fairness), independence, accountability, avoiding libel, attribution, right of reply, accuracy and balanced reporting to mention but a few.
To this end, digital technologies have swept away ethics and rendered journalism a playing ground for every jack and jill.
Amidst this regression, there has been a notable loss of public trust, abuse of free speech, heightened cases of hate speech, Disinformation and Misinformation, defamation/assassination of character, loss of credibility and generally a lack of accountability
Self Critique
In the face of this ethical erosion, the media must self-introspect. Is the media infallible and without blemish? No! I however stand to be corrected in the event of a contrasting school of thought.
The media should as a way of preserving its only remaining integrity, concede to these challenges. The impact of diminishing news credibility goes a long way in altering society’s view of the role of media in democracies. In the event, their loss of trust is propagated as a negative outlook, media may be doomed.
To mitigate this quagmire, journalism should do more than necessary to tackle ethical issues. For instance, in the case of Botswana, the time is ripe to resuscitate the Botswana Press Council and enforce the Botswana Media Association Act.
Similarly, more training needs to be done to capacitate citizen journalism and or digital journalism on the role of ethics in reporting. It is also incumbent upon individual journalists to educate themselves on what constitutes newsmaking and how to best present it to a non-discerning eye.
It is not easy for a layman to distinguish between fake news and accurate reports and therefore the media has a role to inform and do so accurately in its Gatekeeping role.
What happened to news verification in New Media?
The headache necessitated by some emerging fly-by-night publications has always been that some treat news as village gossip. What goes as news in one platform becomes a duplication across the board.
Deliberately spreading falsehood is akin to setting up a wildfire. Journalism is fast approaching a period where the fire will spiral out of control for it to be put off.
When social media sensationalism passes as journalism-the effect is a deterioration of trust and a lack of accountability. This needs attention.
There is journalism and then social media sensationalism. The audience has to scrutinise which to follow in case of developing stories. Social media influencers or sensationalists also tend to liken themselves to journalists in the greater scheme of things and they do get confused for such.
Journalism should wake up! Rumors are not facts. News is what is verified not what sources allege. News writing is not gossip peddling or rumour-mongering.
Good journalism is premised on good sourcing and it’s never nice to read contradictions all in the name of breaking news. Worst still, basic news gathering is compromised for breaking news.
Kabo Ramasia is a Senior Journalist and a Media Scholar.
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