By Amin Kef Sesay
Should the media be held responsible for the dissemination of incorrect or biased information? There are many people who I have heard say that they do not buy or read newspapers because, according to them, the Salone media has largely become a propaganda machine not news outlet.
I have also heard many people say that the media has been maligned or falsely accused of corruption or some other social evil say, I hate the media, I don’t believe a f***ing word. According to them, the media would love nothing more than our country to burn to the ground. . . F**k THE MEDIA.
For the media to be taken seriously by the people that it aims to serve, the practitioners must know at all times that the media has a job. To inform, entertain and persuade. And it is up to us to set our own beliefs and ethics, in what we think is right or wrong.
Opinions are one thing but news reporting should be just “report the news” don’t make the news. Freedom of the Press does not mean that the Press opinion should be the news of the day. It should only be reporting the facts that can be substantiated.
The Press should report facts not make news. A journalist must know at all times that, “To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.”
As such, many educated people who follow the news do not want their children to grow up in a world where they are told what to think. The media should have a responsibility to provide facts to allow people to independently make up their minds on issues.
Thus, if Salone should be a well-informed society, our news outlets cannot allow themselves to be controlled by any political party or corporations bent on moving their agendas forward.
In all other professions, such as law, engineering, health, construction, farming, etc, people are held responsible for the products they create and that is because poor products or services can badly affect people.
Why should journalists be different? Why can a journalist use a headline that in no way actually represents the facts of the story but justifies it by saying that headlines grab attention or sex sells?
Why can a journalist criticize a food product about false details yet a journalist can provide false facts or half-truths to support their stories? So, just like all other professionals, the media must be ethically and morally responsible.
Journalists to be respected and influential as society change makers should hold themselves at a higher moral and ethical standard than the rest of society because of the influence they have on the public.
They should not be seen as biased and always pushing their own agenda and political views.
This is on the basis that the public holds the opinion that the Media feeds lies and biases to its audience; acts very irresponsibly by slander and distort and omit facts.
Another gripe the public has against the media is that they do not give the same amount of time retracting/correcting a false story that they gave to spreading it.
They state that many times, when the media reports on something that is in line with their ideology, they report on it for days. But when something turns out to be falsified about their initial report, the retraction is often a quick, one-time blurb. Those the media has maliciously and unfoundedly offended maintain that the media should give the same attention to their mistake that they gave to the incorrect information that they published.
