Third, and final instalment to my podcast series. Thank you to everyone who has listened in on my thoughts of online journalism and gone through the journey of Ashlee’s discovery of podcasting.

My first podcast EVER, broadcasted for KJB222. Ignore any difficulties talking as I am getting over my sixth bout of tonsillitis for the year.

Join the digital journalism conversation! Find the listicle blog post, an accomplice to this podcast, here and share your views with #dae-zea.

Regulating the voices of journalists has been suggested to address the rising fake news trend that is tainting today’s media sphere. However, is this regulation just censoring the voices of some of the most valuable voices of today’s journalism? Ashlee Murphy of dae-zea tackles this pressing debate in a two part blog series.

“Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived,” states The Cluetrain Manifesto, a work of business literature compiled collaboratively by four American business analysts/journalists.

There is no dismissing the value of the internet. The buzzing realm of the world wide web comes with an inherent freedom of speech and opportunity for conversation. The internet is quickly evolving to be the world’s most immediate source of news. Right now 38% of Americans are keeping up online only and 72% of those are reading their news on mobile devices.

Since the rise of the internet, titles such as ‘the blogger’ have come to the professional journalism scene. And, despite the often lack of qualifications, 57% of the American population is more likely to send their money that way rather than mainstream media. This is majorly in hand to the readership-journo relationship that is present in the conversational nature of being online.

UK Managing Director of affiliate marketing network, affilinet, Helen Southgate, now poses the question to bloggers, “how (do) they go about building on this trust, maintain editorial integrity, and at the same time, monetise their site?”

Regulatory demands are being made in light of the fake news epidemic and as the web is the widest distributor of the ‘open, natural, uncontrived’ human voice, online journalists are in the spotlight of criticism.

Convergency reviews have previously disregarded bloggers, with the Finkelstein Review citing only those with 15 000+ hits online warrants regulation. With so many of the internet’s influential voices below that bracket, it is long overdue for Australia’s regulations toward media and communications to see a refresher. This is largely due to the traditional frameworks for regulation being aligned with broadcasting and telecommunications, which dominated the media sphere in the 1990s. Clearly, these frameworks are just no longer appropriate for new digital media.

The biggest loophole within this framework revolves around the pressing question of what is an online journalist to do in a profession that next to no-one wants to pay for? Well, the answers, as described by Crikey, are speed (with accuracy lagging behind), Churnalism and advertorials. This means real, quality news content is lost; drowning in a sea of poor quality, unoriginality and profit marketing. Crikey describes this as online journalists ‘essentially viewing readers as eyeballs to be sold to advertisers.’ Of course print and broadcast are equally as guilty, however the intangible conversational, casual nature of online media often means that viewers don’t really know that what they’re viewing may be inaccurate or sponsored. Such content is not within the monitoring of media guidelines.

Due to that very casual nature of online, and specifically social media, journalism, there is a ‘heard it through the grapevine’ narrative evident.

The photo of one victim, a 22 year old student named Sunil Tripathi, had been shared over Facebook by his friends and family after he’d been missing almost eight weeks. However, Twitter and Reddit escalated his search when users falsely accused Tripathi as one of the Boston Bombings suspects. Within twenty-four hours, the name and image of Tripathi was trending over both social media networks.

PHOTO: Twitter

Malinowski’s (who is notably the BuzzFeed Senior Sportswriter) post sparked further speculation over the innocence of Tripathi. The tweet was retweeted almost 140 times, and supported on other social media sites such as the Tumblr of largely infamous pop-culture blogger, Perez Hilton. His family subsequently endured a long night of phone calls, hundreds of threats and anti-Islamic messages (although they are not Muslim).

Tripathi was later found dead in the Providence River, ruling out any foul play and suspicion over his involvement with the Boston Bombings.

Social media was so very, very wrong and it is the flexibility, rapidity, spontaneity and economical value that makes it such a viable option to spread ‘alternative facts’, such as the misidentification of Tripathi, for journalists. This stands as the most potent support for the regulation of journalists worldwide.

A comparison between a media licence and the medical school graduate “MD” was deliberated in part one of this blog series. The health practitioner registration installs faith from patients, why shouldn’t a similar assessment process be attributed to journalists?

Doctors don’t deter their patients from seeking treatment from specialists or other medicinal sources; a regulated journalist wouldn’t be bigoted against readers extending their interest to other sources either. Therefore, an open media sphere with the freedom of speech that journalists hold so dearly wouldn’t be severed, but journos would still practice under ethical, universal regulation.

While regulation will be no quick-fix to the curing journalism of fake news, the newfound media trust that will be installed with new regulations across all journalistic forums will make fake news easier to distinguish.

Regulating the voices of journalists has been suggested to address the rising fake news trend that is tainting today’s media sphere. However, is this regulation just censoring some of the most valuable voices of today’s journalism? Ashlee Murphy of dae-zea tackles this pressing debate in a two part blog series.

People love the internet, and especially social media. It’s new, vibrant, exciting and free. We all have something to talk about, whether it be through Snapstories, Tweets or the ever populating Facebook Live videos. The opportunity for conversation gets people engaged and they feel as though their opinion is really wanted and cared about. Just human nature to appreciate that, right?

The internet is also a place that relies heavily on sharing. Social media is at the very base of this, especially because it is at everybody’s palm. The smart phone and social media are the twentieth century’s power couple; a romance stemmed from the three C’s; convenience, conversation and collaboration. Because of this sharability and interactivity, media giants have embarked on online journalism strategies to further their content forums to more audiences in a more engaging scope.

And that’s exactly what online journalism is; the new media scope. Traditional media is no longer the immediate gatekeeper to information because it has lost relevance to a world of bloggers, podcasters and vloggers. However, with these emerging ‘professionals’ comes a fair deal of questions regarding their credibility.

The debate of journalist regulations has been thrown around the media industry recently with sharp glares at online journalists. Social media’s sharability and interactivity have been scrutinised for its potential to initiate and open the throttle on fake news.  However, the wheels on that bus have been going round and round on traditional tabloids for decades, just see below. Perhaps it’s traditional media tropes we should be wagging our fingers at.

Photo: hutchyb/iStock, retrieved from AARP.

In fact, if there is anything from traditional media that should be completely retained, let it be the reliance on market liberal theories.

Market liberal theories refers to a free flowing ‘marketplace of ideas’. The internet does this well by neglecting some of the more traditional employment barriers (enter the media ‘amateurs’: aforementioned bloggers, podcasters and vloggers as well as start-up news outlets and freelance journalists) in favour of a greater media pluralism. Regulating the media would just stand to interrupt this.

Dr Tim Senior writes for Crikey, ‘As an interested observer and consumer of journalism, I thought clearly journalists needed to have some system of external regulation, and wasn’t sure how they couldn’t see this. The current system was broken, journalists had too much power, they could write whatever they wanted, push a particular agenda under the guise of free speech.’

His point is driven home with a comparison to doctors (notably Senior is a doctor), however one can’t simply compare journalism to the field of medicine. Medicine requires lengthy training, specific detailed knowledge and demonstration. One would argue that journalists, as gatekeepers of the truth and the loudest public voices, should follow some similar gruelling education and licensing processes. However, there are just too many question marks hovering above the concept and none of them are being answered. Why? Because it is just too difficult to introduce a filter to an industry that’s already established a new liberated media landscape online.

Let’s all be good journalists for a second and consider the W’s: who, what, where, when, why. Who would determine what knowledge and skills someone should learn and be able to demonstrate to get a journalism license? What are these rules for journalism? Where would these rules be established for global consistency? When will these same people enforce the rules and impose penalties? And why? Journalists are not general practitioners. Journalism and medicine are completely incomparable industries; regulating processes that may be necessary for medicine are redundant for media. Why, you may ask? The journalism sphere needs ‘amateurs’.

Call them ‘amateurs’, but these little guys are broadening the title of a journalist. Niche markets require journalists with immediate knowledge and passion for the specialised industries, whether this be hyperlocal stories or specifics such as search engine optimisation. With so many niche interests, there is clear competition within the market for attention. Online journalism is accessible. There are little to no entry barriers and, in comparison with print, inexpensive online advertising rates and ‘laser sharp customer targeting’. Thus, those with interest can jump on deck and start pulling the ropes instantaneously with quality content and the ability to distribute it on the world wide web. Soon enough, the under dogs are the top dogs with an aptitude for evolving and enhancing their business models to meet global journalism market demands.

All in all, we should be considering the technological shift in the current journalism business model and neglecting any further regulation within the media code of practice. It’s unnecessary. The internet is too conversational in nature to control, hence why these online journalists are doing so well. Besides, to legislate authorities to regulate the media would cause conflict between the government and the major Australian media organisations that parliament has direct association with. As quoted by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2011, when he was the Opposition Communications Spokesman, “we would be just walking away from so many tenets of a free society.”