The social responsibility calls for five functions for the media to have in society.
Power is now found throughout media and its organizations with the gatekeepers that hold information. The social responsibility theory does not deal with the realities of economic power, which is a huge problem since the media is mainly corporate owned and publicly traded with profitable corporations. Mass media is so powerful that we naturally should question it's intentions when providing us with information. Our book mentions "can the watchdog be trusted when it is inexorably entwined with the institutions it is watching?" which really helps frame the dilemma that our media and its consumers are faced with.
I don't think it's wrong for the media to be prioritizing in hopes of gaining profits, I think that is a natural instinct of anyone with a job. We now have an overwhelming amount of data to sift through and finding credible sources isn't as easy as it should be. The internet has created more competition and more voices that are loaded with information.
As profit in fragmented media market declines, profit declines as well.
I am a fashion blogger so this is a topic that hits close to home for me. I treat my blog like a business and interact with my audience. I want my blog to be focused on quality of content, which our book discusses as something that is rare to come across now. Journalists want to get the newest information out first and skip over details that we once had more time and control over.
T.V is coming to the point where we may only be hearing and seeing one huge conglomerate view. We are losing our ability to view other opinions and types of programming because the same conglomerations are making the decisions. However I do think that there is now the advent of blogging and hearing everyone's opinion, which can be hard to ignore. I prefer blogs because of their honesty (or so I'd like to hope) but I can use my own knowledge and get an understanding of the blogger's intentions and credibility. I think blogging will be much more mainstream and used for advertising.
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