Reuters Report Into Journalism: BBC Should ‘Adapt To Buzzfeed In Order To Survive’
WHAT next for the BBC? The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has reported on developing editorial standards for journalism – “Accuracy, Independence and Impartiality: How legacy media and digital natives approach standards in the digital age”.
Kellie Riordan, author of the study, writes:
Journalism is facing many challenges in the 21st century, as traditional business models become more precarious and the Internet becomes overcrowded with a deluge of information. In the digital age, one of the most complex challenges is how to re-shape the processes and editorial responsibilities of journalism itself. Which journalistic standards, many devised more than a century ago, still fit in the digital age? And which standards form the basis of a new type of journalism being pioneered by hybrid news sites that have come of age in the digital era?
The key questions to be examined are:
1. Do current editorial standards fit digital journalism, or does the nature of digital and social journalism require different standards?2. Which standards do legacy and digitally native news organisations place a premium on and why? Which principles do they share? Where does any difference in standards occur?
The BBC is looked at:
The world’s largest broadcast news organization has the strictest and clearest standards of almost any news outlet, which, according to the report, can make it hard for them to compete for audience attention. The report suggests this strictness can also create a damaging “false balance,” in which a commitment to impartiality can overwhelm a commitment to the truth. Inside the BBC there is division over the future of the organization and whether the broadcaster needs to be one of a handful of purely objective news outlets in the cacophonous digital age, or adapt to places like BuzzFeed in order to survive.
Journalism.co.uk has more.
Posted: 4th, September 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
