There is a battle going on between the new world of news media and the old world which has, and will no doubt continue, to destroy some of the media giants that have existed for hundreds of years. With the internet, anyone can now come along and write an article, completely fabricated or truthful and unleash it onto the world. This has been revolutionary for how news travels and who actually controls stories, but it has also created a vast network of content that presents itself as journalistic, yet lacking the integrity most journalists abide by.
In the modern world, even just a headline or advertisement will make outlandish claims that many people will take as fact because they don’t ask questions of the source. In fact many sites on the internet like buzzfeed gain most of their audience by making a title so outlandish that it brings someone to click on it and discover something else completely. This is fine and good for articles mainly consisting of entertainment, but what about if articles written on serious matters are actually taken seriously. We see this happen in the election every four years with completely fabricated posts about both parties making their way to facebook and mainstream media, only to be found to be a hoax. However, most of the damage has already been done, if you make a small enough claim that people don’t bother to check many times it will change their opinion for the long term.
Most of the fault lies on us for not checking sources, but the amount of media we have available to us at any moment, means that most people will only glance at an article or read the first paragraph. For example if I were to write an article where I made a claim like “Is Obama in favor of murdering kittens?” , but then go on and write that he is not in favor of such a thing, you will still get many people who actually think Obama is for killing kittens. The lack of skepticism by the population at large is letting crazy ideas to leak out into the real world. This is a test if you are reading this mention it in your response so I can see who actually reads past the first paragraph. The dangers of which can influence others on elections, how we act , what we buy ect.
The real danger that these click bait blogs have brought to the internet is now we see old forms of media that was once reputable , like news papers, pandering to the greater public while lacking the same integrity of online. These giant media businesses that once were able to get by on merit and integrity now see their profits disappearing and are looking at other solutions to get back in the game, one of which is turning more into a click bait type newspaper. This benefits no one as now few places are actually doing good reporting and finding well done and truthful pieces has become extremely hard. Even some programs like VICE that try to market themselves as good reporting, usually end up completely biased or flat out wrong just because they are pandering to the audience. We need reputable news sources but it seems that over time people are caring less and less and just want entertainment.
We as a public that desires and deserves to be well informed need to show that we are willing to pay and consume media that still brings journalistic integrity to the table. I have no problem paying for a newspaper if I know that they will do their best to not burn the years of merits they have won for a cheap short term profit gain. It is hard to recommend government subsidization, but if we look at other countries like the UK having the BBC we can see that it is the places that don’t have to care about profit that end up bringing the best pieces to us. For profit news is a hard business because more and more people only care about entertainment which they can receive for free, or at least with a small amount of advertisement, on other platforms. We as a consumer of media have to be vigilant about making the right decision when watching, reading and listening to various forms of media.
-Calaber24p