Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Which is to say, no, good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Confirmation bias is universal, however, so it takes a lot of work to learn to bypass it.
[…] good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Hm, perhaps my usage of “self-evident” isn’t super accurate here — I agree that one needs to be taught/be in possession of the knowledge for how to determine if a sample of journalism is “good”. What I mean to say is that I think articles contain within themselves all that is required to determine if they are examples of good or bad journalism — all that’s required is for someone to know what to look for in the article to determine that for themself.
That depends on what you mean, I suppose. If what you’re saying is a savvy reader can fact-check an article if they know how… probably yes, in most cases. There are also probably warning flags and markers in most pieces to tell a savvy reader whether they should be following up in the first place.
If you’re saying that a savvy reader should be able to spot the quality of the information on the spot based entirely on the information within the article, then obviously not. That would mean the reader already has all the information in the piece and then some. The process of determining that is going to take some additional work to seek additional information, which is why it’s so hard to rely on crowdsourced fact-checking. Not everybody is going to have the time or availability to do that every time.
[…] If what you’re saying is a savvy reader can fact-check an article if they know how… probably yes, in most cases. There are also probably warning flags and markers in most pieces to tell a savvy reader whether they should be following up in the first place. […]
An example that I would add would be the mere presence, or lack thereof, of citations. If nothing is cited, then, imo, it’s not great journalism.
If you understand citations as you’ve been using them here (i.e. links to other media formatted as academic citations), we don’t agree.
Naming sources yes, sometimes, but many journalistic reports are based on personal interviews where citation is trivial, official sources (police reports, press statements from organizations), direct observation by the journalist or anonymous sourcing (government sources say…), so it’s not much of a marker of anything in many cases.
Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Which is to say, no, good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Confirmation bias is universal, however, so it takes a lot of work to learn to bypass it.
I agree.
Hm, perhaps my usage of “self-evident” isn’t super accurate here — I agree that one needs to be taught/be in possession of the knowledge for how to determine if a sample of journalism is “good”. What I mean to say is that I think articles contain within themselves all that is required to determine if they are examples of good or bad journalism — all that’s required is for someone to know what to look for in the article to determine that for themself.
That depends on what you mean, I suppose. If what you’re saying is a savvy reader can fact-check an article if they know how… probably yes, in most cases. There are also probably warning flags and markers in most pieces to tell a savvy reader whether they should be following up in the first place.
If you’re saying that a savvy reader should be able to spot the quality of the information on the spot based entirely on the information within the article, then obviously not. That would mean the reader already has all the information in the piece and then some. The process of determining that is going to take some additional work to seek additional information, which is why it’s so hard to rely on crowdsourced fact-checking. Not everybody is going to have the time or availability to do that every time.
I assume you mean the first option, though.
An example that I would add would be the mere presence, or lack thereof, of citations. If nothing is cited, then, imo, it’s not great journalism.
If you understand citations as you’ve been using them here (i.e. links to other media formatted as academic citations), we don’t agree.
Naming sources yes, sometimes, but many journalistic reports are based on personal interviews where citation is trivial, official sources (police reports, press statements from organizations), direct observation by the journalist or anonymous sourcing (government sources say…), so it’s not much of a marker of anything in many cases.
Yes.
I agree.