You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Write about the following topic:
The news is an important source of knowledge for all of us about the world, especially in this era of technology. Journalists are mainly responsible to bring this news to us but not all of them are true to their responsibilities and ethics. How much can we trust the journalists?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1: [we cannot completely trust the journalists]
Access to the internet is easy in the modern era, and we can quickly get the latest news on our electronic devices – thanks to modern technology. Although I believe many journalists are honest and have genuine integrity to their responsibility and ethics, we cannot blindly trust all of them.
In this digital age, competition in the journalism industry is fierce. In order to stay ahead in the business, some journalists may present news which they did not double-check or reports that lacks originality. It is also true that some journalists make clickbait news to attract attention from the public, which enables them to get payback from internet traffic. Therefore, how to distinguish reliable information is becoming increasingly vital for us because we cannot rely on every news or the reporter behind the news. For example, it is reported that five out of twenty pieces of news could be clickbait when we read news randomly from unverified news aggregation sites or social media.
Having said that, we still have many honest journalists who present the truth to their readers and have courage and integrity. They take their profession as a responsibility to the people and are not scared of danger and threats. They even take risks and carry on tough jobs to show the truth to the audience. Such journalists are doing excellent jobs to make the world a better place. To give an example, journalists who travel to war-torn areas to give us the real picture of the event, or do investigative reports to publish corruption are doing commendable jobs.
In conclusion, we can do some cross-checking to make sure the news we read is reliable, because, in this day and age, fake news is ubiquitous. Numerous outstanding journalists are still working to reveal the fact to the ordinary public, but we should not trust every journalist as not all of them remain true to their duty and morality.
[Written by – Casey]
Sample Answer 2: [we should always verify the authenticity of the news and the credibility of the reporter]
Due to the emergence of technology, we have online news portals besides the printed newspapers, and it seems like anybody can be a journalist with a dot com website which puts an already questionable profession under more scrutiny and doubts. While trusting journalists and their reports, we should always verify the authenticity of the news and use our common sense.
Without reading newspapers and watching the news, we will be unaware of the world around us, and that is why newspapers play such a profound role in enhancing our knowledge. People who constantly work hard to bring that news and information to us are doing a tremendous job and they are often the reason we learn about corruption, global crisis, updates on an important national issue, and even the score of our favourite sports team. A responsible and honest journalist is like a soldier who fights a righteous battle to keep the citizens informed and eliminate corruption and unjust from society. However, not all of them are true to their responsibilities, and many of them put business and personal gains over ethics and responsibilities.
When trusting a news report or a journalist, thus, we should always check the news source and the credibility of the reporter, especially in this era of modern technology where online news portals have grown and spread like mushrooms. Clickbait journalism and politically motivated news are constantly bombarding us with the help of social media, and they have primarily one goal in mind – making money by playing with our emotions and feelings. As informed readers, we must rely on authoritative newspapers and verify any news source before believing them. For example, I generally tend to believe the news I read on bbc.com, but sometimes I also check the news on other sources. Our common sense about news can be a big tool to filter out the fabricated news as we should read the truth even if it is something we dislike rather than reading false news which is exactly what we want to hear or believe.
To conclude, we have good journalists and bad journalists, and it is our responsibility to be wary of non-authoritative news and not-so-credible journalists. We should also use our common sense to read news which is based on facts and truth.