Angela Phillips

TRANSPARENCY AND THE NEW ETHICS OF JOURNALISM

Professional journalists rate investigating, fact checking, and standards of accuracy high among the qualities that set them apart from amateur journalists and bloggers. This paper addresses the spread and the implications of news “cannibalisation” (taking material from other news organisations, without attribution). It asks how the loss of exclusivity is impacting on practices of reporting and on standards of “accuracy” and “sincerity” and suggests that establishing new standards of transparency could help protect professional reporting in the new, networked era, as well as improving ethical standards in journalism.

SOCIABILITY, SPEED AND QUALITY IN THE CHANGING NEWS ENVIRONMENT

Speed and quality used to be considered the twin pillars of “good” journalism. Now there is a third pillar: sociability. It is no longer enough to be “first with the news”, nor is it sufficient to be comprehensive and trustworthy. It is now increasingly considered necessary to ensure that news is produced in a form that is capable of spreading virally. This paper considers the way in which “viral” transmission is impacting on the work of news journalists and news organisations.

Implications of Technological Change for Journalists' Tasks and Skills

Abstract The authors explore how technology has altered the work processes and activities in news organizations. They show how story ideageneration, research, sourcing, processing, packaging, and repurposinghave changed and created needs for news skills and capabilities.

Practising What We Preach: the role of practice in media degrees—and journalism teaching in particular

Abstract In this paper, two practising journalists argue for the legitimacy of ‘practice’ within media and communications degrees against both those inside the academy and outside in the media industries. The paper challenges the nervousness of both traditional media and communications theorists and those outside the discipline who, fearing the new, have sought to marginalise media practice and undermine practitioners through the machinations of the Research Assessment Exercise. It also engages with the spurious claims of critics from inside the media industries who challenge the ‘employability’ of media graduates, despite the fact that these graduates have, overall, a good record of success in finding work in the sector. However, the paper questions the legitimacy of vocational media degrees per se, since they must perforce lack the intellectual rigour which should still be at the core of an undergraduate degree. The paper concludes by arguing for a culture of mutual respect between media theoreticians and practitioners as the best way of resisting onslaughts on the discipline.

Can Trust in Traditional News Media Explain Cross-National Differences in News Exposure of Young People Online?

Using data from a cross-national survey (N = 940) and from in-depth interviews with 37 students in Israel, Norway and the United Kingdom, we discuss how in different political and news media environments young people’s trust in traditional media can explain their news exposure online. This study shows there are some similarities, but also major cross-national differences, between young people in how they trust, are exposed to and find different news sources usable for information about their society. Students from all these countries have higher trust in traditional news media than in social media. However, young people in Norway living in high-trust environments tend to be exposed to a wider variety of news sources than the UK and Israeli students. They also tend to be more skeptical about social media as a useful source of information. Furthermore, this study suggests that in a national context of conflict and low trust in media, such as Israel, distrust in traditional news media can explain foreign news exposure online. However, the effect of trust in national media is not significant in the Norwegian and the UK sample, which highlights the importance of discussing online news exposure in different national political and media environments.

The case for media degrees

uates wanting to enter publishing. Yet that seems to be the grounds on which some of those teaching and practising journalism, are attacking media and communication degrees. Peter Cole, ex-editor of the Sunday Correspondent, and now Professor of journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, writing in the last issue of British 10urnalism Review, suggests that editors are confused when faced with applicants who &dquo;wax lyrical about bias and semiotics but seem to know

Misunderstanding News Audiences : Seven Myths of the Social Media Era

Misunderstanding News Audiences interrogates the prevailing myths around the impact of the Internet and social media on news consumption and democracy. The book draws on a broad range of comparative research into audience engagement with news, across different geographic regions, to provide insight into the experience of news audiences in the twenty-first century. From its inception, it was imagined that the Internet would benignly transform the nature of news media and its consumers. There were predictions that it would, for example, break up news oligarchies, improve plurality and diversity through news personalisation, create genuine social solidarity online, and increase political awareness and participation among citizens. However, this book finds that, while mainstream news media is still the major source of news, the new media environment appears to lead to greater polarisation between news junkies and news avoiders, and to greater political polarisation. The authors also argue that the dominant role of the USA in the field of news audience research has created myths about a global news audience, which obscures the importance of national context as a major explanation for news exposure differences. Misunderstanding News Audiences presents an important analysis of findings from recent audience studies and, in doing so, encourages readers to re-evaluate popular beliefs about the influence of the Internet on news consumption and democracy in the West.