The Ethics of "The Frame"

The dissemination of information now belongs to the masses.

That is old news.

Professional media outlets are struggling to compete with citizen-sourced and entertainment media sites for the public’s attention.

That is also old news.

Journalism’s identity is being stretched in a multitude of directions.

Yet again, thanks for the old news.

What do these trends taken together mean? I would suggest that their compilation lends itself to careless journalism, which in the end could leave a void of one of the traditional journalistic principles: truth. I do not worry about this manifesting itself in outright lies necessarily, but in lacking the whole picture. In his article “Ethics, Frames, Terrorism,” author, photographer and professor Steve Raymer refers to this responsibility of journalists as “framing.”

Raymer suggests journalism is moving away from framing the news in a complete sense and is favoring smaller snapshots of the larger picture. I see this as possibly being a result of the juxtaposition between the ever-increasing emphasis on instantaneous news and the journalist’s identity crisis.

Within the conversational discourse of new media, experimentation and innovation are purported as the only way for news organizations and independent journalists to survive. Catchwords like relevance, adaptability, multi-skilled, and versatility sum up the gospel of new media salvation.

While I do not necessarily disagree with these conclusions, I worry about what our product may end up being if our story production is done too hastily.

Specifically, the speed at which information is being presented can create an atmosphere of panic for the author. No journalist wants to be charged with presenting “old news.” That may be considered the quickest way of dooming one’s career.

Unfortunately, I fear this makes verification and the transparency of a topic less convenient, therefore, a more tempting aspect of the process to forego. What it may come down to is efficiency at the expense of context.

For the professional, this compromise could blur the line between he or she and the amateur blogger, which only further disarms our industry.

The fact is that the collective “amateur” will always have the advantage in efficiency over the professional journalist; they are usually the ones witnessing and experiencing the story firsthand. Perhaps what journalists need to do is stop trying to be the best amateur and realize where their true value lies: as the synthesizers of all aspects of a particular situation. This would be done in the hopes of giving the clearest “frame” for the public to be truly informed within.

One of the potential downfalls I see with being a “jack-of-all-trades” journalist is that we may be spreading our expertise too thin. This could in turn have a negative effect on our ability to properly contextualize the news ourselves, much less convey it to others. I definitely agree with, and am not ignorant of, the importance of learning as many skills as possible. However, I hope we remain focused on why we’re learning these skills; we need the skills to tell the story, not to beat out the competition by being the first to say anything on a subject.

Raymer gives examples of such lapses in context. For instance, he points to emotional photographs that are isolated from a deeper explanation, or the reckless use of certain words that often come to be attached with societal presuppositions; these attached meanings may not be fair to the actual situation.

Here is where the issue of framing intersects with ethics. If our industry increasingly imitates the Internet’s knee-jerk pattern of reaction without understanding the situation ourselves we may find that we are consistently misrepresenting the truth of the news.

I see so much potential for journalism in reconciling the inevitable trend of rapid production and multi-faceted story telling with a society still in need of credible news distribution. Here are some ways I see of tapping into this idea:

1.) Utilize citizen-produced information to lead you to the story and what is relevant to the people.

2.) Use various forms of media (i.e. writing, photographs, video) together to provide a more holistic picture of the news story than a story comprised of one of those elements.

3.) Set a new structure of what journalism is by realizing the importance of providing a complete synopsis of the background and context of the event.

4.) Be a centralized, and trusted, compiler of the multitude of voices.

Others might say that traditional journalism has never been responsible for laying out all of the background of a story, or framing, in the past and that they’re job was strictly to report the news. However, it is clear that our society is different now and therefore there are different needs. I would argue that the increase of information flow has created an information-saturated, or at least opinion- and image-saturated, culture. The result is “information vertigo“ and the need more than ever for some contextual grounding. There are examples of both mainstream and non-mainstream sites dabbling in this contextualization process, but it could happen more consistently, or even become the norm, within the industry.

I hope this is seen as a great opportunity for journalists to gain a deeper understanding of our world and is viewed as a freedom of identity and freedom from the rat race of information vomit. As thoroughness becomes more and more of an anomaly, we may have found our niche.

To survive, and to survive ethically, we need to stop pretending we’re something we’re not and emphasize what we uniquely are.

We can’t be the quickest, we can’t be coolest, and we can’t be edgiest. But we can channel the many forms of media to thoughtfully contextualize and frame as completely as possible the stories of our day. We owe context to ourselves, the public, and the players who are found within each of our stories.