Independence in Journalism
Journalists must maintain an independence from those that they cover. If they do not then there is always the risk of being compromised and having unfair and unbiased journalism. What I found particularly interesting during our last class was the fact that impartiality or being neutral is not a core principal in journalism. One of our class speakers even made a point of saying that it is impossible to not be biased in journalism, because everybody has a certain passion about what the writing.
However, with independence in journalism, the topic it is more focused on freedom of spirit and mind rather than written neutrality. Making sure that a journalist’s reputation maintains credible and that they are practicing ethical journalism, while also keeping themselves independent is tantamount to good journalism.
Unfortunately journalists are getting a reputation of being part of a larger organization, and that they are there to feed the machine. A meme that I recently saw about video games said that one cannot trust the online reviews because they are all too negative, and one cannot trust the game reviewers because they’re all paid to review video games. This is just one example of a lack of independence in journalism. Making sure that journalists maintain themselves free from a corporate machine, and are able to have a clear and independent conscious while reporting the news will make sure that we are getting naturally fair and unbiased journalism .
http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles-of-journalism/
Embrace the Hornswoggle 