Community Contribution #5
In this era, there is just a lot of things going on in social media, which there is a lot of profiles, posts and comments around Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn etc. As we are users of this digital age, there are a lot of things that we would experience, and many views that would have to listen and situations we would all face.
I also would agree with social justice because it is the basic principle of being fair to others around you which helps to promote equity within the PLN and beyond. As stated at chapter 15 in the book “Media and Social Justice,” some facts are not told, which if there is a surging problem that needs to be reported, that makes the story very hard to cover which if there are truths to be demanded, there is very little room after to drift to another topic to ease the pressure because as the public is currently undergoing a difficult situation, something has to be done to solve the current situation as there are too many opinions going on.
Spreading misinformation is also something we have to go against because as people also easily tend to believe something from non-official sources easily, it is prone that they would be mislead, which results in clashes in opinions because some news sources may be biased towards actions, or opinions for people, and this disrupts the neutrality that we have maintained over the past few decades, which now we have to do more extensive fact-checking and only go for reliable sources such as Reuters, BBC and CBC etc.
But when it goes to fact checking, it becomes more and more inconvenient in a way because as newer, smaller sources is not popular, they tend to make a lot of mistakes due to the lack of experience, and depending on the journalist’s experience, the more experience the journalist have, the more neutral and reliable it becomes due to the influence from their previous news company they’ve worked for. So one way I would suggest to tackle misinformation is to learn about how journalism works and to know about how to stay neutral in news reports. Also, to gain a license system where all journalists must have a journalism license in order to become a journalist by studying a related degree, certificate, depending on which organization level they would like to work for more accreditation which would show that this individual is a certified journalist, which would allow the trust level to be higher given that he/she has the experience and related training to becoming a journalist. Not necessarily that with no license, you would be an illegal journalists, but you would only be limited to a role as an assistant journalist, otherwise, there may not be much accreditation.
Overall, I would think that with social justice, tackling misinformation makes it an important factor to contribute, as there are different news sources around the world, with most not being as internationalized like BBC, Reuters, I think that would help for now to rely on more accredited sources because as these are regulated institutions, the requirements would be very high in order to deliver proper, true information to the public in order to maintain the social justice.