Why Government Should Care About the Future of Journalism
This semester I am teaching an online class in political communication. As I prepared the lectures, I read many articles on the rise of social media-fueled journalism and the corresponding decline of traditional journalism. Personally, I believe that journalism is undergoing a good transition back to its past role as a public service. And I believe that social media is the catalyst for this transformation.
Even so, I think that Will Thalheimer makes some great arguments for the other side of the issue. He claims that the blogosphere only produces shallow reporting that will lead to poor information. “Eventually, poor information will lead to poor decisions. Eventually the democracy implodes. Some may see signs of this already. Certainly, most of us would like our democracy to be doing a better job.”
This is an important debate because government depends greatly on the media to report what government does and how people are reacting to the government’s actions.
