This article is taken from The Atlantic Magazine which is being published in the United State of America. It was written by James Fallow. For this article, Fallow had interviewed several people who had made big impacts in the journalistic world. Even though the article is quite lengthy, I found out that the contents are amusing and some even surprises me. Who could have guessed the scenario in a well-developed country’s media world is actually very chaotic and full of frenzies.It is said that the journalistic world is nowadays filled with people who are market-minded and only think about profit making instead of keeping their virtue in telling the truth to the public and educating them. It is destructive but yet unavoidable. One statement made by the notorious face of Nightline on ABC, Ted Koppel, who said that “we are no longer a national audience receiving news from a handful of trusted gatekeepers; we are now a million or more clusters of consumers, harvesting information from like-minded providers” really interests me in a very ironic way. As the end-user of the media, I do believe that we are now being treated as customers who demand for sensational stories, not necessarily informational ones. In simpler words, the more controversial a story is, the more valuable and sought after is the story. Just like the US President, Barrack Obama, stated that it is difficult to keep everyone to focus on the future plans because those are not the things that is being portrayed on the modern media.
Fallow stressed on the importance of the media people to re-embrace their roles as information providers and not only think about business and profit making. Journalist, especially, must obligate themselves to make the news interesting and try to resist from sliding into the infotainment age. We all can see clearly now that the newspapers are falling dramatically as the primary news and information sources. This happened when the Internet was invented. Through the Internet, the public get what they want but actually not what they should have. However, censorship on the Internet is definitely impossible. The world of the Internet is vast and borderless; too wide to be controlled by anybody.
But it does not means that the job for journalists will be easier because to maintain attracting new users to visit the site is eventually hard and media people must know their key role which is to provide surprise for the users to keep waiting and wanting for more. With each new unique story they feature on the sites, this will keep the users engaged and intrigued to stay loyal with the sites.
Nevertheless, the rise of the Internet does not mean that newspapers and television are doing a poor job in delivering information for the public. Internet has some drawbacks as well such as fake information and unreliable sources. Mostly, the news reported on the newspapers and televisions are more trustworthy.
According to Fallow, the development of the new media will bring several worries to everyone. He said that this will become an age of lies, idiocy, and no facts can be trusted anymore. Plus, the media will no longer be able to cover all stories thoroughly due to the fast speed of, mostly, everything! Furthermore, our capabilities as the users to think and making accurate decisions will also depreciate because of the distractions done by the new media.
Yet, to me, it is still too early for us to judge and discriminate the new media. Yes, they might bring some negative impacts towards us as the users but I believe that when it comes to development and modernism, we must face certain degrees of sacrifices in order to move on to a higher level of quality in our lives. In fact, information is vital and without the media, we can never get any information. Without information, what is there left for us in order to move forward.
love your conclusion shaz!=p
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