This semester has definitely broadened my knowledge of the news industry and how essential fact checking is. Media has an insane amount of power and therefore the ability to control what viewers believe to be true or false. With news programs, politicians and those with a social media following being able to make wild claims and only showing certain aspects of a story, fact checking is vital in the 21st century. After seeing a video in class of many Trump supporters believing his untrue statements, it’s quite daunting to see that people do believe the racist claims being made by him. I was also unaware of how utilised fact checking is for late night programs such as the Daily Show with Trevor Noah or the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Reading through my blog posts from this semester, the growth and development of my knowledge is evident. Prior to this class I had never considered advertisements as a form of fake news but after seeing an array of examples of advertisements being displayed as news, I was pretty shocked. Furthermore as someone who is regularly exposed to clickbait regularly on social media platforms, I had never considered it to be fake news. One of the most memorable readings for me from this semester was Engaging, Persuading, and Entertaining Citizens: Mediatization and the Australian Political Public Sphere by Terry Flew and Adam Swift. Their discussion of politicians such as Kevin Rudd being celebrity like figures really interested me as it’s very relevant with so many political figures taking to social media to gain and therefore gaining a celebrity like status.

I do wish I had more opportunities to learn about using some of the equipment in the TV studios but overall I think I experienced a good basic introduction to the technology as well as the roles available in a studio space. It’s clear to me now that whilst everyone has an individual job when filming, it is very much so a team effort. The final prototype videos gave me the opportunity to be floor manager which I really enjoyed and would love to be able to do during a live to air production. Overall this studio motivated me to put myself out there more with the opportunities available at RMIT such as RMITV which I’m excited to try. I’m also now a lot more inclined to access news not just through articles shared on my Facebook feed but through watching the nightly news or reading online newspapers.