We, as media practitioners have a very tough job when it comes to the society. What really is our role? Is it just to give and disseminate information? Or is it to encourage people to do critical thinking and reflect and debate upon the everyday issues that we, media practitioners, especially journalists, present to them. Is it right to just entertain people even if it does not make any sense? Or do we need to go counter-culture and prioritize critical thinking, information over entertainment?
The traditional view of what is expected of a journalist comes to us from the West. Traditionally, a journalist in a Western country , was expected to act as the eyes and ears of society. They were expected to inform and educate and also entertain society. They were also to see themselves as a watchdog over
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With the changes in media technology, some of these ethical values have come under fire. Consider the area of photography, where, with the computer photos can be manipulated to totally distort the truth. Not only journalists know this truth anymore, with social media, almost everyone knows how each one of us can manipulate a photo. With media, they usually manipulate what they know will suit the taste and trigger the masses, which they know will become a big issue. There is also a case wherein agenda setting comes wherein media only shows what they want people to see and think. Objectivity has also been challenged as unattainable in some circles.
Many times in training journalists in here in the Philippines, we take this model of journalism and journalism training from the West and run with it, without necessarily examining whether it makes sense in our circumstances. Many of our curricula are not regularly revised or subjected to the kind of scrutiny that would make them relevant and enable the products thereof to have an impact on