NEWS IN 21ST CENTURY

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance” a notable saying by George Bernard Shaw, a literary critic and political activist. This quote mirrors what is happening to our news nowadays. Currently, Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram etc. have become popular and widely used by the people. This platform made an impact and a dramatically changes to our society. As you can see, social media becomes the news and information source of almost every individual. Due of the fact that social media and the internet becomes popular, I observe that there are fewer people reading and buying newspapers. I remembered before someone asked me why I’m buying a newspaper, I said that it’s for our activities then he said, “ganon ba? Kaya nagtataka ako may nabili pa pala ng dyaryo” . This shows that reading newspaper is unusual in this day and age, in short “old-fashion”.

It’s a good thing that people has another option to be updated on what’s happening in the world, the problem is that not all news and information we can see in social media are reliable and based on facts. At this point of time, there are some users that have taken advantage in using social media as a tool to mislead, harm and deceive other people by posting fake news and sharing disinformation. One of the most recent cases of fake news here in the Philippines was last April 6, 2020, police authorities have arrested 32 people for allegedly spreading fake news about the corona virus on social media. The Philippine National Police (PNP) said that these people are posting false information about COVID-19 that caused panic among people. This proves that some people are heavily relying to what they see on their feeds, they immediately believe that when they saw news to their social media this means that it’s true all the time without checking it out if it’s a genuine news source. This fake news has the power to change people’s mind, perception as well as actions that can lead to a negative effect to our society. Therefore, I can say the news in the 21st century become different, it decreases the quality of the news in the matter of accuracy and human interest as well as it has a negative impact. We have bunch of trustworthy news source (print, broadcast, online) here in our country, the problem is that not all the people are aware of these news sources.

As a result of these drastic changes in our news nowadays, as a student journalist I know that it’s hard for the newspaper organizations to go with the flow of transitions. I think newspaper organization has ways to cope this changes or changing values. These days, I’ve noticed that several print media companies are advancing by spreading their news through a new platform. This new platform is the internet or the online platform; they make an online websites and social media pages to keep up with these changes. What are written on their printed newspapers are the same as those on their online websites. The Manila Times (manilatimes.net), Business World (bworldonline.com), SunStar (sunstar.com.ph) are some of the newspaper organization that used online platform as an extension to serve relevant news to the people. This development made by the newspaper organization helps us to have trustable sites to read news and gain the value of accuracy also, it’s more accessible for us that they can catch the human interest of the mass.