Unknown to several people including celebrities, the word ‘journalist’ in its simple form refers to a person who writes news stories or articles for a newspaper, a blog, website or magazine or broadcasts them on radio or television.
Journalism is the act of disseminating news to the public. Journalism is more of a practice, not an academic discipline. This is why Julian Assange, Christopher Hitchens, Komla Dumor and several others are counted as journalists (great ones for that matter) without having attended any major school of journalism…
I am making the above statement to arrive at the point that, the emergence of new media and the shift from the traditional notion of information dissemination has created a long journalistic chain with several people falling into the pot of journalism—just by virtue of what they do from their bedrooms.
As usual, the above has led to gross diminishing of professionalism and expected standards but these does not take away the simple fact that, we now have different forms of journalists with great following and influence.
The influx of new media platforms like blogs have taken away great deal of strength from the traditional news outlets like newspapers and magazines with many struggling to maintain readership…
No wonder the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled in the Cox case that bloggers are entitled to the same protections as journalists. In the court’s reasoning, the court said; “The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others’ writings, or tried to get both sides of a story. As the Supreme Court has accurately warned, a First Amendment distinction between the institutional press and other speakers is unworkable….”
All the above show that, a new media has emerged with great influence and legal protection, as well as a burden of responsibility—-but it seems our African Celebrities (especially Ghanaian Celebrities) do not know how to deal with this new media.