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Q. With the rapid rise of the influencer culture, where every opinion is up for sale, do you think journalism is at risk of losing its integrity, or is this just the natural evolution of media in the digital age?
A. Losing? I thought it was past continuous — not an apprehension of a future tense. We form a part of a minority who might be construed as pseudo-intellectuals who can differentiate between fact and fiction. The teeming millions are innocent enough to gloss over such so-called subtleties.
News, in all formats, is dished out to audience to enable them to know how to think. So, it’s rarely to inform audience.
Noam Chomsky’s observation on media has come true as it inspires all news dissemination: He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.
I find uncanny relevance to what Chomsky used as five filters that influence media:
- ownership
- advertising
- official sources
- flak, and
- marginalising dissent.
So why tie about what’s happening in news today? Just apply one’s sense of authentic source before forwarding mass weapons of prevarication.
Having said that, I must say that due to lowering of renter barrier, a lot of digital news/ content sources is better than a lot of legacy media as their content don’t want us to get manipulated into a specific line of thinking. It helps audience to develop multiple perspectives. The challenge for them is to gain traction and manage subscription, both SOVD or AVOD. I am sure with the entry of GenZ/ Alpha generation, which has different values, attitudes and lifestyles, adoption of digital news consumption would only grow and the one to many legacy medium’s influence would further dwindle.