The first duty of Fix Journalism is to current info with social significance as it is. There may be hardly any reason for journalists to precise their personal opinion on points or facts. Forming a judgment or an opinion or thought primarily based on a journalistic report is the readers’ prerogative. Alternatively, journalists are the narrators of facts or reality, not campaigners for upholding or selling an thought or opinion. Apart from describing or narrating what stands within the open, journalists need also to dig deep in order to look into the roots; inviting the readers to take a look at it with them: Journalism turns into meaningful when it tells us the tales which are hidden behind what we all can see.
Journalists ought to and must not give undue significance to sensational news that wouldn’t have much significance within the lives of the readers and the audience alike; this type of observe primarily comes from the need to draw attention of the latter, which, more usually than not, overshadows the first journalistic accountability of presenting socially important details that concern the readers and the viewers in a technique or the other.
It’s solely, and only, the readers and the viewers who are the ‘jury and the judges’; journalists ought to and must allow them to pass their judgment on numerous issues, – it is their responsibility, while a journalist’s duty is to provide the readers with enough data for them to form correct judgment on various issues and themes. Sometimes journalists strive to influence public opinion in favor of a selected side of an issue; this is doubtlessly a fatal apply, especially if the side the media takes is the improper one, and the public opinion has actually tilted in favor of that individual side in consequence of such position on the a part of the media.
Setting heinous crimes akin to rape and homicide themselves as socially important issues with out giving undue (and virtually indecent and inappropriate) importance to social identity of individuals against whom these crimes have been dedicated is likely one of the basic prerogative of the journalist. A lot so that when a lady is raped and murdered; the news must be expected to be on the entrance web page, higher nonetheless if it comes out because the ‘lead news’ of the day regardless whether or not the victim is a poor lady from a road corner or an actress, a celebrity, or a woman from a rich or higher-center class family. This method makes room for treating news involving the identical crime on equal footing regardless the social identification of the victims in every case, and goes a great distance in forming public opinion in opposition to heinous crimes.
It could be the case that in a society crime news, similar to news of rape and murder, haven’t been given due treatment and significance for a reasonably lengthy period of time, as if they don’t seem to be very critical issues. This might finally consequence in the normal tendency of taking heinous crimes like rape and homicide lightly in that society. A really small and ‘carelessly written’ news of a homicide or rape of a woman from among the frequent folks on the back-web page or on the remote nook of an inside-page of a newspaper makes murder or rape appear to be nothing much and even less than that. Correct understanding of which kind of news is socially more necessary than the other (varieties) and the capability for grading news items in response to their social significance or possible and probable social affect is the hallmark of true journalism. The social significance of a news merchandise that doesn’t profit us within the least (although, it would make us amused or sad in an detached way) is way less than that of a news merchandise that makes us feel very fearful about our personal safety. That is so, because this type of news also makes us aware of our personal safety and security.