There was one major story that most newspaper missed some weeks ago – probably because it was negative against the British media.
The Media Standards Trust (MST) harshly criticized almost everyone in the British media, from newspapers to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).
The report was titled “The Need for Reform – is self-regulation failing the press and public?”
One of the other main issues in the report is that the public don’t trust the newspapers anymore. In fact, only 7% trust newspapers to behave responsibly and 75% believe that papers frequently publish stories which they know are not true.
The reason for this it the financial pressure and the introduction of the internet that increases the inaccuracy because of the desire to get stories on to the net faster.
Financial pressure on newspapers these days is a problem but it is unfair to blame the internet and the 24 hour news channel for creating the lack of trust. The trust comes because journalist, once again, feed the public with celebrity and sensational stories, not true investigative journalism.
This is reflected in the report with 70% saying there were “far too many” instances where newspaper journalists invaded people’s privacy. Furthermore, 68% didn’t believe newspapers could be trust to behave responsibly.
What can we as journalist student learn from the report? One of the important lines are:
“Journalists are expected to produce more material, for more platforms, in less time.”
That means we have to prepare to be able to do radio, web, tv, print and at the same time blog and twitter. I applaud these developments because I believe it creates more skilled journalists, however there will also be a need for “specialised journalists” that can spend months investigating a story or making a documentary. However, that would be a small group doing that.
We need responsible journalist that can work on all platforms and hard-working specialists that can search for the new Watergate story for months.
