Response to Chapter 5: "We Can All be Super Heroes"

I think there are some plausible points that Beckett brings up during this chapter. Journalism has begun to shift and with new technological advances, journalism needs to find different methods and outlets. Basic investigative journalism can no longer be taught and Beckett illustrates this point by stating “media literacy courses will have to teach about citizen journalist and how to work them”. The main reason for this is because due to blogging and social networks, the public is beginning to become the journalists; hence, the professionals need to know how to interact with this shift.

Ethnic diversity should play a role in journalism based on certain topics. If the journalist is reporting on hard news, then there should be no reason for diversity and biases should be excluded from the piece. On the other hand, if the article is soft news, then ethnic diversity should be illustrated within the work because; soft news usually targets certain specific groups of people. With that said, I think it would be agreeable to state that the public rather than a certain individual should collectively write certain news pieces. If there is a controversial topic, it is hard for an individual to not portray biased or “framed” opinions. Therefore, if the public interacts with one another and draws different ideas, it brings ethnic diversity and a stronger understanding to the topic.

I do not believe there is a right or wrong way to view news. People have different views and with that said, they will consistently look at news through different lenses. Some people may find news as an entertainment source, while others find it strictly informative. The goal for news is to share important information to the public and how people digest it differs from person to person.

As regards to the question about PR shifting the world of journalism and the effects it has, I believe it to be both positive and negative. Due to the shift, the only way for the world of journalism to stay afloat would be to join “the dark side of journalism”. However, it does not mean that journalism as we know it has completely disappeared, it has just altered certain aspects to adjust to the change. I do not believe that it is possible to teach fairness and transparency to citizen journalist because, the main reason a person would become a citizen journalist is if they have an opinion or certain view on a particular topic. To play off of that, “e-democracy” would be very hard to obtain because people are going to constantly have different views and challenge one another.