“In my humble opinion it is necessary that news reporters reflect seriously on the kind of news they offer to society. When absence of facts starts to become rule rather than exception in the news, who do we serve as communicators? Consumers? With no facts or objectivity in addressing the various issues that concern our societies, can we continue to call news what we publish on the newspapers and other media?”. Bayano Valy [pt] asks what should be considered fit for the news.
Written byPaula Góes
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I once heard a definition of news that I must say very few institutions are striving towards:
“News is getting information necessary to improve a community or fix any problems within the community, to the people who can act on the information accordingly.”
I think what we currently have a lot of the time is quite far from that simple idea.
Thanks for your comment, Mwangi
I have worked for one of the biggest TV in Brazil, in a branch owned by an ex-president, and back there and then news were everything that would be according to his political views, anything that would help to build his image, bring him money and, of course, guarantee that his friends remained in power. I doubt this has changed.
Today I had a piece of news about the ‘media colonelism’ attitude in Brazil. They just report what would be beneficial to them and are quite happy to deny truths that would be potentially bad deals, all according to their interests. Quite sad, quite true.