By Austin Short

Accountability has always been a staple of journalism, but recently it has taken a backseat to top 10 lists and personality quizzes that can be found all over social media feeds. I enjoyed Ken Doctor’s Newsconomics: Rebuilding the news media will require doubling-down on its core values because he pointed out that the founding fathers of our country made sure that journalism would not be stifled.

Those founding fathers did not create that right to protect fake news outlets and stories that are hardly newsworthy. They wanted our government to be reported on transparently and without bias. Even though Trump is trying his hardest to keep the media down they must continue to report on the important issues while abiding to the ethics of journalism, for the sake of an educated country.

It is more important than ever for reporters to hold government officials accountable, at every level, local to nation-wide. There is a need for exceptional reporting, especially when it comes to reporting on politics. The only way journalism can earn back the trust of the people reading its stories is to leave no doubt in the mind of the readers. No longer should it be acceptable to have single source stories, without getting opinions from multiple sides of the story.

That is one of a few fundamentals that have been strayed from recently in reporting. Of course the others would be seek truth and report it and minimize harm. The more journalists employ these methods the quicker we can repair our relationship with our audience. Even if it doesn’t fix that problem at least the media can have the peace of mind that we are going about all of this the right way.

Recently #PressOn was trending on Twitter. This movement is standing up for journalism and asking for those to support it by subscribing to an online publication. Celebrities, athletes and journalists have all shown there support for real, authentic reporting and hopefully that will translate to more people supporting news outlets to protect the sanctity of real news.