Journalism is one of the most important aspects of society

Journalism is one of the most important aspects of society, but can it go to far. It is a public 'watchdog' by monitoring the political process in order to ensure that politicians carry out voters' wishes, and that they don't abuse their positions. Their power is largely indirect: they are not able to force people to do or not to do something. We need digital journalism as it gives people better and faster access to the latest news.

Journalism is a public ‘watchdog’. It monitors things like the political process in order to ensure that politicians carry out the wishes of the public. Nearly three out of four U.S. adults (73%) say that it’s important for journalists to function as watchdogs over elected officials. Republicans are about four times as likely as Democrats to say journalists are going too far in the watchdog role (59% vs. 14%). On the other side of the aisle, 43% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say journalists are getting things about right. Among Republicans who get their political news only from media outlets with right-leaning audiences, 70% say journalists are going too far in their role as watchdogs. Party identity lines up closely with these main sources. About nine-in-ten (93%) of those who name Fox News as their main source are Republican or lean Republican, while a similar portion (95%) of those who name MSNBC are Democratic or lean Democratic. It help candidates if they get more media coverage. When people see them in tv more and more the start to remember their name. So when it comes time for voting people vote for the candidate they saw the most of.

Journalists have a lot of indirect power. They are not able to force people to do or not to do something, but they can influence the way people think but they can set an agenda and serve as gatekeepers. They chose what we know about and what we do not. They effectively show us their image of the world and invite us to share it with them. This is how they get us to think one way or a another. For example in Hungary, nearly 80 percent of the media are owned by government allies. This is how government influences people, if you do not see anything bad about you are less likely to think bad things about them. Governments try to censor news organizations like when diplomats from the Chinese consulate in Sydney bullied a local council into banning the Vision China Times(a newspaper that was not pro-Beijing) from sponsoring a Chinese New Year event and convinced at least ten businesses to pull their advertisements. Even if the crime rate is going down, for instance, citizens accustomed to reading stories about assault and other offenses still perceive crime to be an issue. For example, urban city is dealing with the problem of an increasing homeless population. The city has suggested ways to improve the situation. If journalists focus on the immediate statistics, report the current percentage of homeless people, interview a few, and look at the city’s current investment in a homeless shelter then the coverage is episodic. If they look at homelessness as a problem increasing everywhere, examine the reasons people become homeless, and discuss the trends in cities’ attempts to solve the problem, the coverage is thematic. Episodic frames may create more sympathy, while a thematic frame may leave the reader or viewer emotionally disconnected and less sympathetic.

We need digital journalism. It is part of human nature to want to know what is happing. It also gives us real time updates on what is happing in the world around us. With digital journalism it makes it easier for us to see bias. We can compare different articles on the same topic, and we can fact check journalists. We can access it anywhere which is why it got so big so fast. it does have some downsides like the fact things go viral without anybody fact checking even when they know that they can. It revolutionized how humans communicate and share the news with each other.

This is a summary of why we need to keep journalism alive in our society. It is a public watch dog; it informs us about things that we would not be told by the government. They do have a lot of indirect power which they can use wisely or abuse to get people to come to their side of an argument. Digital journalism is one of the most important ways we can use the internet. Real time stories draw the readers attention and keep much better then l stories about things that happened more then a 1 week ago. This it due to the fact that the internet has lowered the attention span of most humans with 15 second videos.