The growth of digital publishing and new innovative technologies is allowing journalists to reach wider audiences and allows for wider engagement with their content. Propublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that digs deep into important issues producing investigative journalism. In January of 2019, David Sleight from Propublica wrote “Propublica’s year in (mostly) visual Journalism.” Celebrating their first year of “fearless investigative journalism with engaging and inventive presentations” in which he wrote “the stories we report are told not just with words, but also with data, design, photography, illustration, audio, video and more.”
The emergence of visual and convergent media is prominent in todays society and the ways in which we find our news have emerged and become more modern and accessible whilst still keeping traditional news techniques to ensure reliability and simplicity. Propublica’s use of social media allows their audience to engage with their news stories in other ways rather than just their website. Readers are given a direct link to their Twitter and Facebook pages where readers can get consistent updates on news that Propublica covers. Social media in relation to the news has also proven to be emerging and becoming a source of news for many individuals. In a Forbes article written by Nicole Martin How Social Media Has Changed How We Consume News it is stated that “Social media has become the main source of news online with more than 2.4 billion internet users, nearly 64.5 percent receive breaking news from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram instead of traditional media” displaying the ways in which news sources such as Propublica clearly display the new trends in journalism production and sharing. This article also proves that internet users get the latest news from social media before hearing it on a news station meaning that those news sources that keep up to date with news via their social medias are more likely to get viewed.
This is also proven in Reciprocity and the News: The Role of Personal and Social Media Reciprocity in News Creation and Consumption by Avery E. Holton, Mark Coddington, Seth C. Lewis, Homero Gil de Zúñiga where it is stated that “In the developed world – individuals draw upon a growing array of devices, apps, sites, and social media services to both access information and amplify their own capacity as creators and distributors of content.” Supporting the innovative techniques that Propublica utilises in order to engage with their audience allowing them to share news stories across all platforms making them distributors.
Propublica is a highly innovative, modern news source that displays the attributes and techniques of a traditional news source but modified and fit to todays society. The modernised techniques allow for further audience engagement and interest making news stories heard and shared across the globe more effectively. Their use of social media ensures this and also ensures that their audience feels included in the stories they produce and that they are gaining insight into global issues that less modern news sources wouldn’t be able to provide.
Training alongside Monique for two years, the only thoughts I ever had were about how she was so confident and how she was so talented and fit and one of the best fighters I had ever seen, but in reality she had inner struggles and doubts the six months leading up to the competition that fellow fighters were not aware of, and was putting in so much effort outside of the gym that wasnt acknowledged. This goes to show that even champions who live and breathe their sports may not always be as calm as they may seem on the surface.
Integrated Combat Centre student Monique Henderson took home the National Champion title at the WAKO Kickboxing competition on the 26th of May, 2019. Although it was all laughs and smiles as photos were taken, Monique describes the mental and physical obstacles she faced leading up to the competition that were hidden from those who trained alongside her.
“I had been training 11 times a week, I would run 5km every morning or be training at the gym.”
– Monique Henderson
Monique had dropped two weight classes and lost seven kilos in six months due to the dieting and intense training she had gone through and had described it as a big challenge especially trying to stay motivated and keep and positive mindset when she was undergoing such drastic changes in her lifestyle. Monique had a nutritionist, was getting massages and was doing some form of exercise everyday whilst also trying to avoid injuries.
“I was looking at not getting injured but also getting in enough fuel for a good workout whilst also loosing the weight.”
Monique trains at the Integrated Combat Centre with instructors Mario San Giorgio and Ann-Maree Awad and described that sometimes even when she was training at their gym, it would take a toll on her mentally. When undergoing sparring sessions, she would often try to imagine herself in the competition but would be disheartened if she took too many hits thinking it would effect her when the competition day came.
“I would think that was the person I would be versing and when I would take too many hits and knew I was loosing in that environment, it was devastating for me, I would leave the gym crying.”
A month out was when the emotional and mental struggles kicked in and Monique struggled the most. During this time Monique focused on what needed improving at the time, putting herself through uncomfortable situations in order to ensure she would be in the best mental and physical state pre competition to be able to perform the best she could.
Ann-Maree Awad often trains with Monique at the gym and was very encouraging during the time Monique spent preparing for the competition. Ann-Maree understood the hardships and pressure Monique was under so she provided constant support whenever Monique needed it.
“I was able to witness the constant pressures and hardships she went through. At the same time, it was also very inspiring to see her push to new limits, set goals, and meet new expectations.”
– Ann-Maree Awad
“I’ve definitely noticed an improvement in her skills and confidence when teaching and fighting in class. She now pushes others to new limits and has a never give up attitude.”
Ann-Maree and Monique still train together today and have both improved drastically since training for the competition. Monique now assists in teaching others stills and assisting those who may not be as confident when fighting or even training and learning new skills. She has become a role model for the rest of the students at the gym and hopes to continue competing in the future.
Some people dont believe in consequences or jinxes or the term “be careful what you wish for”, but for Simona, a 15 year old gymnast, a simple, curiosity filled conversation turned into reality. Going through a fearful surgey that she knew would literally scar her for life, Simona realised that some wishes really do come true.
The definition of ethics by the Oxford dictionary is “Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity.” So basically its regulating legal and professional actions that should be taken into consideration especially in a professional working environment in order to avoid ethical violations that may lead to breaking the law.
Codes of ethics outline the values of a practice or a business and discuss how problems should be approached. The codes of ethics that are relevant to deception and fakery within journalism are the SPJ Code of Ethics and MEEA Code of ethics, which both display similar ethics and regulations for journalists to follow.
What is meant by deception and fakery?
Deception is the act of deceiving someone into believing something that isn’t true, such as saying you’re 20 years old instead of 30, fakery is just faking something like making a story up for clout or just bluntly lying, really both of them are just about lying which is something that really shouldn’t be done within a profession such as journalism since people rely on journalists for the truth. Roger D Dickson said in his text Making up the news: journalists, deviance and social control in news production “In recent years several examples of misconduct and bad journalistic practice have been exposed and, arguably, have contributed to a decline in public trust in journalism.” Which supports the fact stated that audiences rely on their journalists for the facts of any news stories, and going undercover betrays that trust.
How does it all relate to journalists?
Two vital examples that will be discussed in relation to the terms mentioned are undercover journalists FAKING who they are and situations of made up stories or DECEIVING stories. There are five core principles of journalism that were written by Aidan White that can assist in regulating and setting boundaries for journalist to ensure that they are entering the public sphere with responsibility and understanding on how to project their ideas.
Truth and Accuracy
Aidan states that journalists cannot always promise readers the absolute truth when presenting stories, but they must aim to get the facts straight and not change or manipulate anything that has been said by anyone that may have been at the scene of the story or change any facts of a story. Facts also need to be checked to ensure relevance and accuracy otherwise it could lead to a sloppy or messy story and no one wants to read that.
Independence
Journalists have to have their own voice when it comes to creating and producing a story and not let their personal views or intrests hinder the ways in which they get their stories, and as stated in the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics “Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence.”
Fairness and Impartiality
When it comes to a story there are always two sides. A journalist has to be fair and unbiased in relation to finding out aspects of different stories or occurrences. Journalists can’t favour one side of a story more just because they agree with what that person was saying, they have to balance both sides and add their own context ensuring its not a he said she said scenario and both parties are equally treated with respect.
Humanity
Basic concept – don’t be that journalist that shows things that are offensive or traumatising. If a journalist is covering a fire, ethically they aren’t going to go and take videos and photos of burning victims expecting the community to be okay with being shown that side of the story when they are really only looking for the facts and a slight insight onto the events. As stated in the SPJ Code of Ethics journalists are required to “Balance the publics need for information against potential harm or discomfort.”
Accountability
This is vital when it comes to being a journalist. It’s basically a sign of being a professional and responsible journalist which all journalists would hopefully strive for. If a journalist makes a mistake, does something unethical or offends an audience, according to the SPJ Code of Ethics they must “Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently.” otherwise they wont look very professional right? Yes! Journalists have to listen to their audience.
Undercover journalists? Fake stories? How does that all work?
Undercover journalists are journalists that pretend to be someone they are not for insider information, for example the well known Elizabeth Jane Cochrane pretended to be insane in order to get admitted to an insane asylum and report on what was going on inside. The gutsy acts of journalists is also shown in the acts of Chris Terrill, who pretended to be a wildlife smuggler so he could get insight into the Illegal Orang-utan trade. Basically journalists risk their career in order to get an insight into stories no regular journalist could, but journalists are trained to identify themselves before conducting any interviews or research as a professional standard, so since it is related to the practice it should be taken into consideration.
When it comes to fake stories, a well known example comes from an article was written by the ABC about Channel Nine journalists who were sacked over fake reports on the Daniel Morcombe murder case. His remains were eventually found but the Channel Nine journalists had filed fake reports on two separate occasions. On both occasions, they said they were close to Beerwah where the site of the search for Daniels remains was, when really on one occasion the helicopters were still on the Brisbane station helipad, and circling the station’s Mt Coot-tha studios the other occasion, so really the reporters got lazy and didn’t actually want to leave the studio so they decided to stay put and fake a LIVE report. Pretty silly right? This occurrence went against what is said in the MEAA Journalists Code of Ethics which states that journalists should “Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts.” Which the reporters clearly did not apply to their actions.
Okay, but is it all illegal?
Well technically neither are “illegal” in a sense that someone could be arrested, but there are aspects of both that could be considered illegal and could result in charges being made. For example if someone faked a news article that displayed defamation, they could be sued and taken to court, or if an undercover journalist engaged in illegal manners or did anything illegal such as trespassing, privacy of spoken word, violation of intimate privacy or spying and stalking, they could be caught and arrested under the law, so both are risky and both shouldn’t be conducted.
Deception and fakery are both ethical issues that still affect media today that will eventually effect the trustworthiness of journalists and news reports. Stories should be checked continuously for validation, and journalists shouldn’t have to risk their carreers in order to gain anymore insight than they already have.
As majority of us may or may not know, Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch as well as Fairfax Media now owned by Channel Nine are some of the major media owners that we as viewers trust as a news source the majority of the time. Who owns the media and who we get news from is something that is needed to be looked upon, so having a variety of media owners is vital since different companies get first access to different events.
We as individuals cannot control who owns and who can publish ‘news’ since the media is such a wide concept, but what we as individuals do have access to is social media. People post, share, comment and news spreads. Social media allows for this which can be both good and bad in ways of sharing news and getting news stories to wider branches quickly, but whether it is reliable can be the kind of things we have to worry about when viewing sources. The amount of articles that I see when scrolling through facebook (majority of Facebook is owned by Zuckerberg) that I know are complete bogus is actually surprising considering they can actually be surrounding issues that are actually occurring.
Media ownership can be a complex theory and difficult to understand and it is different in different parts of the world. There are many rules and regulations to ensure that media ownership is fair such as the two-to-a-market radio rule, one-to-a-market TV rule and number of voices rule. Who owns what is definitely a difficult concept for me to grasp and what I find hard to explain so rather than me explaining, here are some fun graphs and mind maps showing media ownership in Australia to give everyone a break from reading so much.
These snapshots show aspects of both media ownership and how different areas find and can watch or listen to their news.
Personally I trust the news sources I know for a fact know the facts of a case. I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing the Channel nine Chief Editor who discussed with me that happened within Channel Nine during the time of the Christchurch attack. What she had told me about how they collected the information and utilised only what they needed me made aware of how trustworthy these news sources like channel nine can be, and how some media outlets may use credible sources, but exaggerate and show things that aren’t needed just for publicity. So do I trust my news sources? Yes I do the majority of the time, but I am now since starting my course am realising how important it is to know who owns the media I am trusting sources from and how to differentiate fact from fiction.
All images can be complex and have deeper meaning depending on the audience and the depths at which they go to in order to decode an image. Complex images usually have many meanings depending on how far one can go in the process of decoding and their societal or cultural background.
For example, this 1950’s advertisement for cellophane displaying a stalk carrying a baby wrapped in cellophane and a young boy also wrapped in cellophane can be seen in many different ways and have a variety of different responses both good and bad. This company had many other advertisements involving small children wrapped in the cellophane which raised questioning as to why they were wrapping children in such a dangerous way in something they were trying to sell. The quote above the first image “everything’s at its best in cellophane” and the second image “the best things in life are wrapped in cellophane” to me seems like they’re trying to say that the best thing in life is a child? And children are at their best when wrapped in cellophane? Yeah children are great but so are cakes, why not have an assortment of cakes on a nice little platter and wrap them up in cellophane? To me putting children in there seems a little morbid and quite abominable. Makes me wonder who came up with the idea for DuPont back in the day thinking “lets show how great this cellophane is by showing it can suffocate children yay!” No but seriously I’m sure there could have been other ways the advertisers could promote their product without probably causing people to think they were nearing killing children for the sole purpose of advertising.
All jokes aside this is a complex image that would definitely raise a lot of questioning and a lot of complex conflict within todays society especially now because people go really deep into things (we all know this), but then again a lot of controversial and even non controversial advertisements get released in the media everyday and always have second meanings for different individuals, but some are always more shocking than others. How I would love to get into the minds of some of the people that come up with advertising ideas.
Being apart of an audience means more than just sitting watching something; you’re part of a group who are all there for the sole purpose of being entertained or educated by something – concerts, tv shows, movies, seminars even university lectures you’re part of an audience.
The most logical reason I would be part of an audience by choice is to watch a concert or performance, one recently being a Foo Fighters concert at the beginning of 2018. With the band being so popular with the “oldies” it was very amusing to watch middle aged men scramble to get to the front like a mass of teenage girls fighting for a front row seat to see Justin Bieber. Once the concert actually began it was a mess of drunk parents who had left their kids with grandma and grandpa for the night and some parents who actually brought their kids not embarrassed at all to be fangirling (or fanboying?) in front of them which for me was one of the best things about that experience. But seriously being a teenage girl in that kind of scene was kind of weird for me. I never thought that people in their 40’s would have that type of energy and that much power in them to literally push to get as close to Dave Grohl as possible, but never the less it was great.
Being apart of an audience at a concert like that is something that a lot not people don’t see as extraordinary. You’re all there to support and be entertained by one sole person or group that you all enjoy and the interesting thing is, you may have never known there were this many people who have something in common with you. Everyone knows the negative aspects of being within an audience is that sometimes there may be conflict or something not agreed upon. Even if it isn’t at someones performance you’re still apart of their audience because you’re constantly watching them whether it be on the news or on social media there will always be conflict or disagreements when it comes to being part of an audience; there with always be something that some will see as non ethical or something they don’t agree with. Never the less we are all going to experience being part of an audience in our everyday lives and there is always going to be the perks and the downfalls but the experience is worth it.
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