The Importance Of Journalism

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20-0006-0018 Edna Renick Administrative Support Department 30 January 2018 “Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information.” It is the art of differentiating valid and invalid resources. As technological advances have increased the availability of sources, it has become increasingly problematic to find reliable ones. Because of this, the job of a journalist has become harder as the years have passed. It is extremely important for journalists to ensure that the information they base their writing they present to society is indeed valid. The new technological world has made it precarious to trust a source without validating its credentials. Rather than using their fingertips to hold…show more content…
With efforts to reduce the amount of false information in their research, journalists can try to ensure the information they are using to provide service to people is valid. To prevent a journalist from saying “Oh, crap,” due to researching an unreliable source, they can use the CRAAP Test. The CRAAP Test is an acronym to help one remember how to know if a certain site has validity. This easy-to-remember acronym is a great way for journalists to quickly know if the information they are looking at is a good source of information for their research. Because they have limited time to research a particular event, conflict, or issue it is great that the CRAAP Test can help journalists become more efficient in their research. The “C” stands for currency which ultimately means how old the information is and when the information was published. This is extremely important because new research brings new information with it; therefore, a source from ten years ago on certain subjects may not be as valid as a source from only a year or two ago. Relevance is the meaning of the “R” in the acronym. Relevance is how the information in the source relates to a subject being studied. This is one of the easiest characteristics of a source to initially spot. If it has minimal relevancy to the information an individual is looking for then it is a beneficial idea to move on and find a more relevant…show more content…
Ultimately the journalist is putting their job and reputation on the line. It is better to spend time validating a source to ensure that it has the right qualifications rather than to use information to cause a homogeneous society of both true and false information with one problem: what can be believed and what cannot? Works Cited Barthel, Michael. “Newspapers Fact Sheet.” Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 1 June 2017, www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/newspapers/. “Evaluating Information – Applying the CRAAP Test.” Meriam Library, 17 Sept. 2010. “Evaluating Internet Sources.” Evaluating Internet Sources : Olson Library, library.nmu.edu/guides/userguides/webeval.htm. “How to evaluate website content.” The University of Edinburgh, 4 July 2017, www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/library-museum-gallery/finding-resources/librarydatabases/databases-overview/evaluating-websites. “Research Guides: "Fake News," Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction .” Library Research Guides, University of Michigan, 21 Nov. 2017,
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