Journalism Panel

 Are we a bit too harsh on the media ? 

Aside from politicians, there are few groups of employed workers in America who are associated with more negativity than journalists. Trust between society and the media is as thin as it has been in recent history, due to this lack of trust and negative perception it can often be lost in the shuffle that many within the field of journalism still fill critical, even potentially helpful societal roles. Not everyone who works within the field is correlated to issues of polarization and bias, the journalists who showed up for the panel today were good reminders on why it’s so difficult to make generalizations in the field of jounralism. It is crucial to remember the field of journalism has several components that are all relevant in order to maintain functioning media in the country. All three speakers today work within the field of journalism, yet they hold three very different positions, making it nearly impossible to make judgements about all journalists together as a whole. What fascinated me was the emphasis both Dan and Ellen said their organizations have put on increasing and managing diversity. Philadelphia and Chicago are both cities with large minority presences, one of the biggest issues within American media today is the lack of representation amongst reporters, it is progress to see institutions dedicated to ensuring diverse communities are as adequately represented as possible. Ben noted that in the past the Buffalo news has had issues with diversity, Ellen stating it was a “boys club”, so although progress is being made quicker within other papers and institutions, many diverse areas of the country are still lagging far behind. 

Ben elaborated that this lack of diversity has effected the coverage of news in certain areas of buffalo, with a much higher focus on crime and violence in predominantly minority neighborhoods rather than pieces of culture and neighborhood communities. As a citizen of buffalo now, and someone who plans to continue his studies in buffalo for the foreseeable future, that information makes me hesitant to rely on the buffalo news for major news stories. Playing devil’s advocate, that same dismissal of an entire publication based on the inadequacies of a few journalists and or higher ups may be too extreme a reaction. Reading through Ben’s work, it is not evident he has the same clear and obvious biases against certain communities within buffalo as discussed by Ellen. 

Is it possible when evaluating whether or not you should trust a publication, you should evaluate the author/editor/marketing team responsible for the individual content more than the attitude of the organization overall? Or is it entirely justified as a reader to be turned away from an entire outlet due to individual journalistic inadequacies, or even worse a pattern of them ?! This question is made more difficult by the declining popularity of the field, it is not always a plausible option for someone to change their whole career course or find a different source of employment if they see murky stuff going down within their organization, it would be a shame to have the voices of those journalists be forever silenced by the reputations of the papers who employ them. I hope that the advancements in online employment opportunities will decrease the prevalence of this issue and allow journalists with more options to transition as Ellen and Dan have, hopefully not at the expense of abandoning the presence of local journalists who report on communities the most accurately.