Sputnik... The media has a huge influence on us, yet we hardly ever stop to think about how it works. Charles Wiley, a veteran US journalist who has worked for major print and electronic media for over 60 years, elucidates on the state of the media today. 00:00 / 00:00 Charles talks about disintegration of standards, where young journalists “cannot write or speak properly”. The fact that journalists, outside of a few surviving mainstream press services are not paid very well, means that the profession is attracting fewer professionals.
The lack of professionalism as demonstrated by editors means that journalists are no longer required to be as objective as they used to be, says Charles, who harkened back to his own experience at university when senior journalists and professors drummed into students’ minds the importance of presenting both sides of an argument.
Now, articles are often slanted “by what they leave out” explains Charles, and editors do not bother to ask journalists to correct their texts as they used to before.
The rise of the electronic media can be welcomed from the point of view that it is now more difficult to lie, because there are so many people out there checking facts. The downside is that the electronic media lowers journalistic standards even further, and it is difficult for readers to distinguish between reports that have been well put together and reports written by a fanatic “pumping a typewriter in a cellar”.
Despite all of this, the media continues to hold huge power particularly in the USA.