By Makram Ahmad Al Tarawneh,
Editor-in-Chief, Al Ghad Newspapser
AMMAN, JORDAN: In a short period of time, two important steps were taken in Jordan to organize the media sector and grant professional status to those who deal with it.
The first was by the Journalists Syndicate, which referred a group of those it deemed to be impersonating journalists to the judiciary.
The second came from the government, which issued a circular to ministries and official departments mandating that they deal only with journalists who are members of the Journalists Syndicate.
The two steps were well-received by the press corps, who viewed them as part of a series of measures to regulate media work and establish the true definition of a journalist, which necessarily excludes anyone who is “alien” to the profession.
Over the past two decades, with the revolution in communications and the explosion of social media, the media profession has suffered from strange phenomena.
Perhaps the most prominent of these was the promotion of the so-called “citizen journalist.” This concept effectively contributed to the “dilution” of the profession of journalism, equating all those conveying information.
We must draw dozens of red lines under the term “information,” which is now being disseminated without any regulations related to credibility. All that matters now is the speed of publication, regardless of any other potentially destructive considerations.
In numerous discussions over the years regarding the need to regulate the media profession, the greatest challenge has been confronting the proliferation of “citizen journalists,” who carry a camera everywhere and publish everything without any work ethics or respect for the law.
They have transformed themselves into news reporters or analysts, and their influence has surpassed that of actual journalists, not because of the accuracy of their information or high level of professionalism, but because they publish what people are interested in and share it quickly.
If we want to be objective and fair, we must acknowledge that the phenomenon of “citizen journalism” has had a positive aspect, breaking the monopoly on information and expanding the scope of coverage. However, the negatives it has produced easily outweigh any positive aspects.
This type of media has contributed to the spread of misleading and false information, due to the lack of verification standards among those who practice it.
They transmit information without scrutiny, or fabricate it for personal, political, sectarian, or ethnic reasons, disseminating fake images and videos to reinforce their false narrative. This negatively impacts public opinion, which is fueled by conflicts that do not exist, and is drawn into these conflicts due to the sheer volume of publication and the flooding of the space with false narratives that dominate everything else.
In this type of journalism, professional and ethical standards are absent, individuals’ privacy is violated, and balance and objectivity in reporting events are ignored. This leads to a loss of trust in the media in general, given the difficulty of distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources.
All of this poses a significant threat not only to the media landscape but also to the state, which now pursues rumors in an effort to suppress them. These rumors spread like wildfire, becoming an absolute, believable truth, while the official narrative is dismissed as misleading, regardless of its accuracy.
For all of this, the measures taken by the government and the Journalists’ Syndicate represent a step in the right direction to curb these forms of practices that entrench unprofessionalism and media bullying.
We hope they will contribute to reducing the phenomenon of fake and misleading news and, more importantly, will lead to the distinction between journalists and the others.
