“Anyone can blog, tweet or post videos but both the challenge and opportunity is sifting for what’s relevant and true from streaming information, putting that in context and explaining its meaning,” Reuters Philippine bureau chief John Mair told mass communication students at the University of the Philippines.
The UP College of Mass Communication recently celebrated its 46th foundation week, themed “New Directions in Communications and Media Studies,” with a lecture series. The Thomson Reuters forum, “Journalism: Challenges and Opportunities,” was one of the highlights.
The key message of the forum was that journalism rules still apply in the age of Facebook and Twitter.
According to Mair, this year’s graduates may have cut their teeth on new media, where stories are sourced and shared in new ways, but the old fundamentals of journalism—accuracy, balance, ethics, attribution—hold true as ever, and that copyright and libel laws should apply to the Internet as well.
“Control of communications reaches people on the ground, courts sympathy everywhere else and helps win revolutions. Radio Veritas did that for the Philippines then. Now, in the Middle East, smart phones enable anyone to feed video, photos and messages globally. People are being organized through Facebook and Twitter,” he explained, comparing the 1986 Edsa People Power to the ongoing uprising in Libya. The former, he said, presents a counterpoint on the drastic changes in media coverage, which is now a socially driven, real-time, multi-channel communications highway.
However, this works both ways. Mair argued that the enemy can use the same channels to get their desired result: reaching supporters, courting sympathy and winning against the revolt. Misinformation is a danger too when journalistic standards are not upheld. The world is more interconnected than ever and the next journalists will have to take that into account when reporting.
“The crisis in Libya, for example, has a much larger resonance—the watching investors, US-policy implications, oil-supply disruption and 30,000 overseas Filipinos workers. From the floods in Pakistan and Australia, to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile—journalism’s rule and role is to really see the various angles. Because one can’t be everywhere, the variety of net reporting is an asset but always verify the source, tell the truth, and think before you post.”
Thomson Reuters donated 20 desktop computers to the UP CMC to signify its support for the college in instilling accuracy, balance and integrity in information delivery to its students and, perhaps, as a reminder of the basics in journalism.
“Information is our business. Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest information provider for financial, legal, tax and accounting, and scientific and healthcare professionals, as well as the world’s largest international news agency. Providing the facts and telling the truth run across our businesses. We hope CMC students put the PCs to good use in their own mission of telling the truth,” senior site officer Raoul the stated.
CMC dean Roland Tolentino responded, “Since I became CMC dean, a pressing need was for a central media lab for scriptwriting and post production for film students, statistical and analytical software for communication research students, and web design and editorial work for journalism students. That the ‘world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals’ is providing tools in the shaping of excellent communicators—that is a mutually beneficial gift indeed.” —Ed Biado April 2, 2011
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