The Role of Journalism

I rely on media/journalists/news to convey information to me every single day, consistently throughout the day. I mostly rely on new sources from twitter, including @BBCNews, @BuzzfeedNews, and @BreakingNews. After twitter sources, I enjoy putting on the evening news as background noise while I do things around my apartment. I like following twitter new sources because they are updated rapidly, and the information is concise. Also, in 140 characters, it is difficult to skew the new stories toward any bias.

Within the past two weeks, for instance, I have been following the story of the two Wisconsin preteens that stabbed a peer because a fictional internet character told them to do so. I don't know if that news story has permeated the television media, but it has certainly infiltrated the internet world. Maybe this is because the girls use the internet as their source of meaning. However, I have been following it throughout twitter sources and through the entertainment/news source Buzzfeed. What seems to vary the most between sources is the emphasis they place on blame. Some sites are quick to place blame on the girls and their parents, for a lack of supervision. Others, more often sources that are not solely internet based, like tv media outlets, have a tendency to blame the internet for creating this subculture.