Credibility in Journalism They Say Essay

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Up to this point, the media has generally been considered the arbiter of objective truth, with an obligation to "provide news and information that is accurate, fairly reported and untainted by diminished credibility" (Union-Tribune 2004). But this doesn't sem to be what we are asking for in other arenas, and frankly there isn't any media outlet, whether in print or on television or the Internet, that is completely "untainted by diminished credibility" -- everything has funding from somewhere, and money gets the message out. If news is going to be slanted anyway, why not make it open and outright? John Leo notes that overt examples of mixing fact and fiction in "journalism" already exist, and also notes that "society has its own truth troubles," listing "docudramas" as the first of these (Leo). We as a culture are obsessed with things that we can believe as truth despite the obvious slant, so can we really expect our servants in the news media to behave any differently?

This question is made all the more relevant -- and ironic -- by the fact that Shattered Glass is itself a docudrama; a fictionalization of mostly true events told in a sensationalized version in order to make it more compelling. While cliched lines like "Look at me and say that again" might miss on the compelling mark, they certainly stand out as scripted rather than naturalistic (Ray 2003). There is no small amount of irony in the fact that this movie is so successful in getting its point about journalism and truth across by fictionalizing real events.

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The difference, of course, is that the movie does not purport to be complete fact, and any moviegoer with average intelligence should be able to deduce the fact that not everything happened in life as it did in the movie. Blair wrote a memoir of his lies and their effects, of which it was asked, "How much can we expect to learn from someone we know better than to trust?" (Braun 2004). The answer, according to Shattered Glass, is a lot -- as long as the story's powerful enough.

What's really at the heart of the question here is what we want out of our media. As a society, we have consistently turned away from boring truths in favor of sensationalist approximations -- reality TV shows, docudramas, etc. If our journalists have started to follow suit, we have only ourselves to blame. If we accept these circumstances, however, the notion of objective truth in our society will disappear altogether, and we will be left only with choices between various subjective stances. If we want more truth and credibility from our journalists, we have to demand better analysis and attention paid to the truth from ourselves. Society's ills do not excuse the acts of these individual journalists, but it is….....

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