Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.46640/imr.11.21.3
Mapping the Challenges of the Journalistic Profession in the Contemporary Media
Ljiljana Lj. Bulatović
orcid.org/0000-0003-1087-7247
; Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia
Goran Bulatović
orcid.org/0000-0003-1087-7247
; Faculty of Media and Communications, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
Under the influence of modern technologies and especially social networks, professional journalism has found itself in a gap between the norms, standards and original requirements of the profession on the one hand, the demands of employers, owners of media companies and industry on the other hand, and on the third hand the expectations of the atomized public guided by different particular interests, preferences and prejudices. In the paper, we point out the challenge of professional journalism, which affected the loss of trust between the news media, journalists and the audience, which affected the change in the professional identity of journalists, and instead of independent, critical and objective researchers and suppliers of information to responsible democratic and Cretan public opinion, they were reduced to “employees in media companies”. One of the consequences of journalists abandoning the norms of professional identity and focusing on the public interest is a flood of fake news that makes the media ecosystem even more chaotic and a superficial and media-uneducated audience prone to simple solutions and prejudices, easy to manipulate. In such a shaped media ecosystem, in which journalists do not have the obligation to check information before publication, but rather leave it to the users, manipulation is not only aimed at the economic profit of media companies, but also at ideological and political indoctrination, the spread of hate speech, fear and mistrust, and ultimately the creation of conditions for non-democratic forms of government. In the paper, we claim that documents establishing measures to strengthen trust between journalists and the public will have no effect if the journalists themselves do not reaffirm their professional identity and gain the support of the public to protect their professional standards from the influence of the market and profits.
Keywords
journalists; fake news; media ecosystem; professional standards
Hrčak ID:
283659
URI
Publication date:
11.9.2022.
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