staging

Sarah Orscheln

Since the day I started taking Journalism classes at Mizzou, I have heard two things repeated over and over again. 1.) As a journalist, our loyalty is to the people and 2.) TRUTH, above all, is the most important aspect of what we stand for as journalists.

I think there's validity in the point that we not only stage something if we ask someone to recreate it, but we can also "stage" or "falsify" media when we create something that is different from the way we originally percieved it. I don't think it can be argued that there is a good deal of creativity that marries with journalism because of the fact that we have to reach our public. We try and reach the audience but there I think there's a creative line that we shouldn't dare cross because that is when we face the dangers of making up the news.

From the beginning people have tried to sensationalize news to make it more appealing to the masses. It's important to take into account the society that we live in as a result of a free press and how these freedoms can be taken away simply by clouding the truth that we portray as journalism.