Last week in class we talked about journalism as the watchdog of society. In essence this means that it the journalist's job to to pay attention to the happenings in the world and inform society of all the important details. But as was mentioned in class, since journalists are indeed human, they have the tendency to be biased towards their stories. Because of that, journalists cannot ever be completely objective and objectivity is something that's really important to be a watchdog. So are journalists actually the watchdogs of society? Can they actually fulfill their job as watchdogs? And does the public actually want journalists to fulfill this role?
Journalism has certainly changed since it was named watchdog of society. Now that the public can be journalists for themselves they don't need professional journalists to watch out for them. Because of this the watchdog role is certainly weakened. In the elements of journalism it says that watchdogism is being turned into a form of amusement.
The question comes down to: What is the role of a journalist? I think that they are still watchdogs. The public has the ability to report on their blogs and their twitter and facebook on whatever they want. It is the journalists that have the training to step back and look at the bigger picture. Yes, they might be biased, but who isn't? At least this way they can look at all the stories and put them out for the public to hear instead of a person on their blog who is only going to post an even more biased entry about the piece of news of their choice.
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