The Catch-22 of Backpack Journalism

The American population is aging assimilating more visually stimulating media outlets. It’s only fair to infer that the future holds, to a greater degree than what is present, backpack journalism. Future news consumers expect to receive news complete with videos, photos, links, blogs, narratives, etc. And journalists have moved to accommodate the trends of the now. But Jane Stevens wrote, “I can do a little muckraking, if need be.” It all depends on editing. Anyone can take a straightforward video, and completely mislead the consumer by skewing the footage to tell a nonexistent story. Reality television does it all the time. In the quest to satiate a changing audience, journalists are caught between the obligation to the truth, and making each story interesting and unique. Thus, the challenge facing 21st-century journalists is not how traditional media will coalesce with modern forms of delivering the news, but rather how to maintain sound ethical practices while doing so.