ABSTRACT
This essay issues a call to arms for journalism: to combine unprecedented knowledge about the workings of the mind with new forms of professional practice to disseminate vital, accurate information throughout the world. In a time when multiple truths, untruths, half-truths and make-believe truths dominate media content, journalism has an opportunity – indeed the obligation – to step up as guardian of the real. By making effective use of new technologies and social practices, good journalism can demonstrate not only that it is worth public attention but also that it is worthy of public trust. We can trace reporting practices back to human survival instincts and to
ancient images and symbols painted or carved onto rock walls to communicate with those who came after us. Traditionally, the practice of journalism has involved talking face to face with people, directly observing and recording events, gleaning documents and preparing accounts for dissemination in printed words and images. The relationship between reporting and the real world – the world of material things – was reinforced by the physical properties of the processes involved. Today, journalism technologies range across handmade symbols, hand-cast type and engravings, machine-cast type and images, electromagnetic transmission of sound and images and computer-generated
type, images and sounds. Journalism practices have evolved, too, developing writing styles and formulae, editing standards, longer and larger story packages, wider audiences, and new formats such as the internet and the infotainment, profit-oriented genres that increasingly blur boundaries among reportage, persuasion and entertainment. Although the new processes and practices still are physical – in that electromagnetic energy is physical – to users they may seem less tangible and thus less credible.
