When I think of News on the web I think of websites like BBC News, CNN and ITV News. These examples are informative websites discussing headlines and current affairs that are going on around the world. These sites that I assume to be ‘news’ on the web adapt from their television counterparts. I feel that nowadays many people find it easier to find out news on the internet than buying a newspaper or watching it on television. The internet is updating every second so you know that you are accessing the most recent news, it is easy to check on a daily basis and is easily accesible from the home. Websites such as BBC, Sky, CNN etc also have video footage and audio articles to help entice the audience into viewing particular stories. With having extras like audio and video stories on their sites it is also a way of combining Radio, TV and the internet into one site. What do you think?
These sites have a good repuation of broadcasting appealing stories to their audiences. They have high standards of video, photography and journalistic input implying the high standards which they wish to obtain in all sectors of the media. Personally this makes me think that they are more reliable, as I would not expect regular members of the audience to be the writers/journalists. They most probably have a forum which allows their audeicne to express views and be the writers (indymedia).
Indymedia is based around the idea of the audience being the writers/investigators and writing their own opinions and stories. These are less reliable than the other new sites that I mentioned in the previous paragraph as many of the auidence will not have any journalistic/written experience. Although like most journalists they may have an air of bias in their stories.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree Amy, Indymedia is an example of how the internet has given people the freedom to be journalists. However, the reliability of their stories does seem to be questionable. In saying this however could we have too much faith in what we are being told by other types of media. News does have to be told to the public, but it is surely manipulated in some way?
ReplyDelete(sorry if I've gone a bit off track there :))
Don't apologise I can see exactly where you're coming from. When I was discussing the idea of indymedia being less reliable I also thought hang on, how do we know that more professional news sites are 'reliable'?
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to determine what is valid and what isn't as genuine. Especially when you hear all these things about the government deciding what is put in the news as if we only a particular side of a story. I think it may be because we have been brought up with these professional media facilities so in a way we kind of expect them be a little more accurate and trust them.
Amy you have said exactly what I was going to say!! As many generations have grown up with the likes of the BBC in their living rooms, we will automatically see these as more reliable because they are what we are used to. However, like you both have said, we cannot take what these institutions say to be the truth, or at least the complete truth. As with all media products, the news must be mediated to some degree for it to be interesting to the masses.
ReplyDeleteGood thread!
ReplyDeletemany of the promoters of citizen journalism make the point that many people 'who know' aren't journalists. There have been countless cases where issues are being debated in the media and the actual experts are misrepresented. Then they get on a forum and put their viewpoint directly to others (also reasonably expert). Hence 'informed opinion' gets better informed than mainstream journalism would have done it.
Of course, this then becomes something that mainstream journalism (usually) picks up on.