Letter to the Editor: Social Media Negative Influence on Traditional Media

Dear Editor,

In the new age of constant technology and the intense use of social media and the internet, I became concerned of a very important and relevant topic that is encroaching into society. How does social media affect traditional news media‘s credibility? At first thought this situation may not seem to affect society at all, but it does.  

Citizen journalists are ruling the news world now. People can post anything they want anytime they want and in the blink of an eye, thousands even millions of people can see it. These citizen journalists have not been trained properly and those posts can be edited to say basically anything that the “journalist” wants them to say.

Fake news has also become a problem and social media has only exasperated that problem. It is not simply that anybody can post anything and that is “fake news,” but it’s that quite a bit of people now go to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to get their main source of news for the day. That can only lead to problems.

To be an active member of society, citizens must educate themselves so that they can properly decipher what news has an agenda and what news is truly trying to inform their citizens, because even traditional news media now is starting to act and flow like social media.

Jacqueline Carr

BBA Finance

Class of 2019