Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience. Although there is much variation within journalism, the ideal is to inform the citizenry. Besides covering organizations and institutions such as government and business, journalism also covers cultural aspects of society such as arts and entertainment. The field includes jobs such as editing, photojournalism, and documentary.


 Unmentioned in this article is the intent of journalism.  While Wikipedia may do a good job of describing what journalism is, and at least the ideal of what it is, journalism seldom lives up to this ideal. 

A goal of any media is for it to be viewed.  While most networks do a good job of informing, it is selective and many times trivial compared to more important, but less easily televised issues as President Obama complained today in a press release.

The point is that there are two components to journalism: the ideals and dictionary definitions, and the actual "business" of journalism.  What makes an informed citizen is someone who understand media agenda and bias, and is willing to investigate issues on their own.  This is what media literacy is about.