Equal Responsibility

In our class discussion last week, much of our focus was on responsibility and whose to blame for much of the misinformation if not lack of information in the news. It seemed there was a question of balance and who was to be held accountable for information: journalists, citizens, or the government. But I think much of it has to deal with journalists. These days we've been trained to believe that everything government officials say is completely true. As a result of that, journalists have become "lazy" to take an extra step to question whether or not the information they received is true. However their responsibilities are to the people and in trying to get the most accurate information out there. This inherently hinders citizens from accessing further information because of the limits created to prevent that.

When citizens feel there is a lack of credible, useful, and insightful information about what is really going on in the world, people take it upon themselves to gather as much evidence possible and blog about their opinions and findings. For the most part, others are drawn to blog or read others' blogs because of its uniqueness, newness in the realm of journalism and the hunt for the real news. Maybe there's a deeper meaning behind all this lack of 'real' news coverage from journalists. I would like to think journalists believe that if the public really wants to know more they'll stay tuned and support those bringing in the real news and refuse to give in to the consumer attitudes by watching news about celebrities.

It's a cycle of responsibility and accountability. Even though journalists get most of their information from government officials they should already know the real story doesn't end there; there's more to it and in order to fully understand it more credible sources and investigation is needed. Equally important is the citizen's responsibility to FIND the real news and proceed further to find relational information and piece the puzzle together.