Technology has always changed things a lot. Usually for the better. Sometimes the changes are obvious, sometimes they are more subtle. When it comes to the media and the internet the changes are quite large.
First of all, I´d mention the aspect of time. The news are almost live all the time now. It is very easy now for the media to set up streaming cameras. Wars make a prime example. Now longer do we watch a reporter tell us what has been happening in the last few days. We simple watch war unfold before our eyes like a sporting event.
The other biggest change has been the change in price, anybody can now set up a website for free and report on the news. You don´t need access to the printing press anymore. This means there is a whole lot more of news now and it´s getting harder to pick what to follow and whatnot.
You could say that it is better to get the news in a matter of minutes, rather than days. However the increase in the amount of news has not made the quality of the reporting better. This is an important factor to keep in mind.
On the whole it could be said that there is more news, there is more specific news, there is more accurate news,(if you can find it) but that does not mean the news are necessarily better.
After all, good news are still hard to come by.
Another way of looking at it, there is the same amount of news. There is just more reporting.
ReplyDeleteWhich again might not necessarily be a good thing.
Personally I find the idea of the professional journalist disappearing a potentially worrying one. It could of course be a blessing in disguise, with a whole load of bad traditions disappearing at the same time - but what if there is no constructive alternative. Is a wash of badly created, researched information better than a trickle of filtered information?
I actually don't have an answer to that myself.