In democratic societies the press is always free to the public due to the ideology of democracy; differently from an authoritarian society where the dictator will have control over the press and publish in the newspaper what the ruler wants. In a democracy, many organizations have the role to present to the public what is happening along the world and in their society. The free press can be dated from the time of the Roman Empire and it had evolved to the point where Penny Press was able for the society. In free press, an individual can create his/her own blog and post news on it. However, he/she has to be ethical when posting something; as an example, one person cannot copy another person work and do not give its proper credibility, doing so a person is acting immorally and plagiarizing someone’s work, this can be summarized as the social responsibility model. Another aspect that people have to pay attention when posting any news for the public, is gatekeeping the information that will be present, since the information that will be posted can hurt many people and have a negative effect on the tabloid that posted the information. The main reason press is free in democratic society is because people have the right to know what is happening and the press is the only way where people can achieve this goal.
In my opinion, the name “watchdog” is related to someone that is an outside observer, waiting for something to happen so that he/she can “take care” of it. The name watchdog gives us the image of a Rottweiler taking care of its ground so that when something happens it is ready to attack. However, journalists being watchdogs means that they are always waiting for any sort of news to leak so that it might become the next morning headline in the tabloids. It can be done by the joint operation agreement where newspapers can share information but still maintain the editorial rights. For instance, if ABC was the only one to record something that happened and NBC wants to present that happening on the program News at 6 pm, NBC will have to give the proper credit to ABC in order to present. Anyhow, journalists are always waiting for something to happen so that it can be exposed to the public through the free press. Some of these watchdogs journalists want to leak information with the intention to hurt people or damage someone’s image, this harmful way of journalism is called libel and it can make many journalists go to court due to lawsuits on what they wrote untruthfully about someone, usually a person that is always on the news spot.
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