Many people get news from various media sources and form an opinion based on this without clearly understanding the difference between journalistic reporting and expert commentary. All news media have been forced to mix reporting the news with entertainment to keep an audience and attract advertising dollars. The balance is difficult to maintain and in most cases cannot be separated.News, the facts or figures of an event: In most breaking news stories, whether it is on crime, accident, political speech or natural disaster, where the public expects the facts, all news media contracts an expert or analyst to quickly add speculation and personal opinions to the story and present it all as “Breaking News”. In covering planned events, such as, Governments’ or business’ conferences, journalist are presented with media kits of the event, such kits expertly produced contains the presenters’ actual words and quotes from front seat participants and if all goes well, that is all that is needed. In the case of an investigative story, a professional journalist outline sources of statistical data and the methodology used in its collection, questions and test presented information, solicits expert testimony on presented conclusions.
News editors and presenters decide what is disseminated and when, a small group that controls what reaches the public domain, mostly based on air-time for electronic media and layout-space in the case of printed media. Broadcast directors and presenters are usually not practicing journalists and even in print media, editors wait on submissions from freelance journalists, traditional practicing investigating journalists are few and mostly underemployed. The media consultant or public relations executive attached to powerful advertising agencies are the ones responsible for most of today’s news.
News transmitted or posted on the internet is making anyone with a story into a journalist. Some newspapers have stopped printing and converted to on-line news media and now track eyeballs instead of readership. The internet, however, has not changed the economics of news, the advertisers are king, hence, entertainment with continue to play a key role in news. Entertainers masked as experts and political analysts openly sharing opinions without a test to the facts or a contra balance.
The human brain has a comfort zone that has been trained and developed along cultural norms, in which only pathways that have been formed through repetitive usage appear reasonable. If we are told something that we have not heard or experience before, our first instinct is to outright reject it, until it is proven by building a neural pathway in the brain. Advertisers use this to influence buying patterns. Advertising revenues pays media outlets based on audience size. Audiences want to be entertained. So when the data or facts are dull it is today’s journalists that have the responsibility to add drama, excitement, conspiracy, speculation and opinions to keep an audience engaged, within the law.
Rationale
T.A.J & Associates Company Limited uses this occasion to comment on topics that have been covered, both academically and by the mainstream media, to add its opinion and point out investment opportunity, not to invoke any social action.
