"New" Media Journalism

New media can be any form of technology with a snap shot camera or video camera, such as a cell phone. With “new” media, seemingly, anyone can be a journalist, or an amateur journalist. Easy access to the Internet is a benefactor in this. With easy access to the Internet through wifi, our computers and even our cell phones, an individual can snap a picture or record a video of any incident. The intriguing fact of this is that anyone can publish an incident that had just occurred to their friends and family on any social network in a matter of seconds after taking the shot. Now the issue with this is, in what circumstance is it ethical to take a photo or video of someone or something and publish it on a social network or any form of internet based media? Is it ethical for someone to take a picture of another walking down the street wearing distasteful clothing? How would you feel if that was you and someone had posted it in a Facebook group? Or is it ethical to take a picture of a house on fire and someone is in the window screaming for help? Due to technology being so accessible people have been desensitized in common sense because they rely solely on different forms of technology to communicate.

New media has made it possible for any form of breaking news, whether newsworthy to all or not, to be published to several forms of technology. In being able to do so, there has been numerous cases of controversy, such as the case where a journalist snapped a picture of soldier in his casket at a funeral. Another incident is when a photographer took a picture of a little girl’s dead body being rushed out of her house in hopes of reviving her. New media isn’t necessarily only about photojournalism or videojournalism, it is also about being able to update a Facebook status or able to tweet using Twitter anything that comes to mind. This purposes a problem to journalists who enjoy using social networking sites like these because they may use it as a form of getting news out, which is not a credible way to do so, and accidentally give out the false information. Even though people are considered amateur journalists, the problem is that they do not see the line between what is ethically right and what is ethically wrong.