What is Journalism?

Journalism can be a very difficult topic to describe because The line of where journalism stops and gossip or opinion begins can often be blurred, and be different for different people. The American Press Institute's definition of journalism is the act of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting new and information. I think this definition is a good summary of what journalism is, but some of the ideas in it can be expanded on.

One important part of journalism is researching the topic firsthand, from reliable sources. Things like interviewing people who know a significant amount about the topic, reading sources that contain accurate information about the topic, and visiting the location of events related to your topic are some of the most common forms of research. Without research grounded in facts about the topic or witnessing an event yourself, it is impossible to write an unbiased report of a topic.

Another crucial part of journalism, is avoiding bias whenever possible, both in your research and when compiling your research. some amount of bias will be present in any form of journalism because you can not always know every detail about your topic, but it can be partially avoided by using a variety of sources and covering as many perspectives as you can. Interviews can be especially biased in some cases, because the interviewee has only seen the event from their perspective, and could have missed important details that completely change the story. The best way to avoid bias in your research is by taking information from every perspective of the event possible. I liked how they said it in the Editors Weblog when they said,” if you get complained at by both sides for being too close to the other you are normally somewhere in the middle, between both camps.”