World News: Journalism or Journalist of Circumstance

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Category: World News - Europe

Published on Monday, 04 December 2023 15:07

Written by Olivier Longhi

The growing influence of non-stop news channels raises questions about the role of the press in societies and media literacy, which has become essential but is nevertheless failing as the sensational tantalizes and feeds the instant appetite.

At a time when there are increasingly heated debates about the weight and role of non-stop news channels, it is not inappropriate today to question the primary function of the media and the press in a world turned upside down by the explosion of social networks and real-time information.

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From a historical and etymological point of view, the function of the press remains that of informing with, as a founding point of ethics, a permanent obligation of objectivity. An obligation, certainly, but one that from the outset has often been evaded in favour of what is commonly referred to as the press of opinion. Until then, the fact that the world of the press was divided into several chapels, often tinged with distinct political affiliations, did not seem to move the general public, who found in journalistic plurality the medium or media that suited them, with regard to the sensibilities of each one.

Immediacy

But the emergence of social networks, both immediate and instantaneous, making anyone with a mobile phone equipped with a camera a journalist of circumstance, has pushed many media to have to reinvent themselves to meet this demand for immediacy born of the often raw, unverified and questionable information offered by these journalists. at best, budding, at worst accidental.

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What followed was a cascade of informational one-upmanship that the average person, accustomed until then to a fixed media landscape, received head-on, sometimes by rejecting it, often by accepting it. Now riveted to continuous news channels that are often themselves fond of the rebounds of social networks, the general public drinks in a multifaceted news that is easily oriented because it is addressed to viewers eager for information and no longer for reflection.

The latter, experienced as demanding and laborious, has given way to information that is delivered at such a rate that it prevents any form of hindsight, which is necessary for a fair understanding of the world. Combined with a lack of media literacy in schools, which are themselves eaten away by the influence of social networks, a paradoxical atmosphere has emerged within our societies, where there is a growing distrust of the media and a plebiscite of news channels, which are often the first vectors of information for an opinion that is now without a reference point.

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Torrents of information

For a long time, the press played a role as a point of reference. The reliability of the information disseminated, verified, and attested, the competence of journalists, cultured and level-headed, all these elements, combined with the role and influence of the school, structured societies that were proud to be able to take advantage of freedom of expression and the press.

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However, if these two freedoms have not disappeared, their use can now be debated because those who avail themselves of them and use them do so without measuring the consequences that flow from them. In the name of information and the inherent freedom that underpins it, non-stop news channels pour out torrents of information without necessarily imagining the impact it will have on viewers.

Because on the other side of the screen, it is a plural and diverse audience, with references, principles and culture that are all different from each other, which receives this information, and which will therefore not necessarily react in the same way to the flow of information. Rarely mentioned for fear of stigmatizing those who have not received it, media education is nevertheless essential to understand their role and their mode of operation, as it turns out, as mentioned above, that it is deficient. Udder! It is clear that it is now news channels and social networks, ultimately information tools, that are in some way in charge of this media education. As if the hammer were teaching the carpenter how to use it.

Bio: Olivier Longhi has extensive experience in European history. A seasoned journalist with fifteen years of experience, he is currently professor of history and geography in the Toulouse region of France. He has held a variety of publishing positions, including Head of Agency and Chief of Publishing. A journalist, recognized blogger, editor, and editorial project manager, he has trained and managed editorial teams, worked as a journalist for various local radio stations, a press and publishing consultant, and a communications consultant.