Journalistic Arrogance

At the end of April I attended the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) conference that occurs at the end of the NAB. The conference theme was "Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity " so there where a number of sessions related to convergence and the changes taking place in broadcasting and journalism.

The first panel I attended gave a nice overview of the changing nature of journalism. Interesting discussion points included how in the online world audience members are active participants and with Web logs news organizations can know what information interests their audience and then tailor news to match audience interests.

One professor in the audience was concerned about the negative impact on our democracy when professional journalists were not the arbitures of truth. He had a problem with allowing the audience to choose what they were most interested in and have that influence the news given to them. He implied that journalists were best able to determine what citizens needed to know. What arrogance. How arrogant and hypocritical to mention the press's role in upholding democracy and in the same breath imply that journalists need to tell the citizenry what they should know. In other words, we (journalists) must control (gatekeep) information for your own good. Hmm, that's not democracy that's an authoritarian approach trying to maintain the illusion of the people's participation.

The Web has been around long enough that Americans have developed the ability to sort through the information and do a respectable job of finding valid information that serves their needs. Certainly, some get mislead sometimes, but so do journalists. In fact, we've found through our own online information resources, that journalists sometimes mislead us too.