Why love-hate relationship between journalists and social media needs regulation
- Social media and journalists work side by side with each other.
- Social media plays an immense role in the propagation of news swiftly and with greater penetration.
Importance of social media for journalists
- Aiding in acquiring new readers: by connecting with them and learning about their interests.
- Lowering the cost of news collection: enables journalists to do more value-added work.
- Allowing connection b/w news publishers with their readers: lure readers to visit their website so they can monetise via advertising/subscription.
Contentions between journalists and social media
- Strengthening social media: The playground has become more powerful than the players.
- Relationship between reader & social media becoming more intimate: so, journalists are getting intermediated away.
- Menace of misinformation: hard for credible journalists to stand apart from misinformants on this playground.
- Rudimentary efforts by social media to ensure credibility: efforts to curb fake news are not full fledged.
Issues/challenges faced by news publishers
- Rivalry among news publishers: prevents them from presenting a united front to bargain for their collective interests.
- Disproportionate suffering: faced by local news publishers, to the extent that many have gone bankrupt in the last few years.
- Changing values: Those news publishers which have survived have become mere content-producing vendors.
- Deterioration of journalistic responsibility: to provide citizens with genuine information.