In The Face Of ChatGPT Will Journalism Remain Human Oriented Or Data Oriented

Before analysing whether Journalism is data oriented or human oriented it is necessary to gain insight about the basics of journalism. A simple definition of Journalism is “the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news items and information through different media.” Traditional journalism originated during a time when information was scarce and therefore was highly valued. In contrast present day journalism is devalued because of an overabundance of news in an information saturated market. Although the core of journalism has always been the news, but “news” has acquired so many secondary meanings that the term “hard news” has gained currency to distinguish items of definite news value from others of marginal significance. With the advent of round the clock availability of news through Radio, Television and social media, a shift occurred. Other than noteworthy news, it became imperative to provide background information, personality sketches and interpretive comments to fill in the gaps when there was no fresh news. As such there was blending of news with editorial content.

Data oriented journalism is a journalistic process based on analysing and filtering large data sets for the purpose of creating or elevating a news story. Sometimes there is use of algorithms, statistical calculations, and numbers to provide insights into the story. When it is a question of maintaining reliability and trust, it is data-oriented journalism which is at the forefront. Human oriented journalism is interpretive and based on the journalist’s understanding and thought process. The journalist may tilt the story in any direction and is not really compelled by hard facts. Human interest stories are a part of journalism and the story angle must be decided by the reporters covering the issue. It does not imply that it is fictional in content, only that a certain aspect has been highlighted. Character sketches, debatable topics (where certain segments of the population are for the topic, others against it or undecided), background research are examples of human oriented journalism. Additionally, in societies where there is no freedom of press, journalism cannot be data oriented. Per force, the media not only has to toe the line of the Government policies but also must present facts in a manner which highlights the stupendous work that the Government is doing and downplay any disasters that the country is facing.

As such it is only niche journalism which has a choice of being data oriented (election results, sports, population census, stock market, agricultural produce etc) or human oriented (fashion, celebrity gossip, earthquake survivor stories, covid warriors and many more). Most of the reporting has to be a fine balance of hard facts being reported to establish trust in the article, interspersed with nuggets of human-interest stories to connect emotionally to the storyline.

It is rightly stated that thousands dying in a war is just a statistical figure which will rarely bring a tear to the eye but a single story of valour and personal sacrifice will form an emotional bond with the audience.

Written By Suniti Kharbanda

Senior Faculty Member