Easy access to free information has shaken the journalism industry and even lead to the fall of some media outlets, but journalists are needed now more than ever to deliver information to the public, panelists said today at Cal State Long Beach’s President’s Forum.
“There are no Google editors,” said Los Angeles Times Foreign Editor Bruce Wallace, a panelist at the global news media discussion that took place at 11 a.m. in the University Student Union Ballrooms.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said journalists are needed to provide accurate information to help citizens make informed voting decisions, though “dozens of journalists are being laid off every day.”
Elias Wondimu, a journalist and editorial director for Tsehai Publishers, said the media should be “agents of positive change” who not only inform the public, but aid in societal change. In a 1994 Time magazine article about the genocide in Rwanda, 1,898 words focused on tourists, being the subject of more than half of the story, Wondimu said.
Pete Fuentes, a broadcast news consultant for Televisa S.A. in Mexico City, presented a six-year-old broadcast that said more than 100 journalists were killed in their effort to report the news during a three-year period in Mexico.
Dalglish said many people do not realize that websites like Google News collect articles from various news outlets, which have their own staff that collect the information themselves. Citizens will be the ones who are “going to suffer” if newspapers fail, Dalglish said.
“I’m very, very afraid,” Dalglish said. “No one will be out there to … make sure that you have the most truthful information.”
Dalglish said the trouble lies not in the “journalism model,” but in advertising.
“This is a problem that relates to money,” she said.
Students who attended the panel were asked whether they read a daily newspaper on a regular basis. Of approximately 40 students, about half raised their hands, though many CSULB journalism classes were invited to attend the panel.
“You don’t have to read newspapers like you take your medicine,” Wallace said, adding that there should be a platform that will help fund the media for gathering news.