Dissecting the Challenges of Journalists in West Sulawesi

Majene, Sulbarkita.com -- In today's digital era, the community is no stranger to the media Social (social media) like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and so on. Even social media is now a place for someone to interact with each other.

Along with its development, social media then has its advantages and disadvantages must be examined carefully. The advantage is that someone can access information or news latest via social media. While the minus, access to information is so fast and easy making someone easily fooled by an incorrect issue (Hoaks). Even entangled in the Act Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) and disputes that led to SARA conflicts.

It is not only easy to ensnare the general public, even so, aka the ink coolies reporter. That is what made a number of journalists in Majene hold a public discussion entitled "Challenges of Journalists in the Digital Age" on Thursday, July 25, 2019 night.

According to Metro TV Producer, Tri Suharman, who was the speaker at the forum, hoaxes, fakenews, plagiarism, and Clickbait (click feed) are the biggest challenges for journalists today this. "Because to prove that information, a journalist must dig deeper information, prioritizing accuracy, and confirmation, "he conveyed the material.

Unfortunately, according to the man born in Majene, there are some journalists today ignoring the principle of accuracy and confirmation. So that many of them end up fall on hoaxes, fakenews, plagiarism, and Clickbait.

One indicator of the ignorance attitude, said Tri, journalists often prioritize get news via phone only. "Even though the true news is more obtained from the results reportage," he said, "Because the reportage results are what you see, smell and feel on the field is data," he said.

Tri, who was a former Tempo media reporter, hoped that forum participants would prioritize the principle of journalism in covering the field. "Challenge journalists are currently bigger than journalists in the previous era," he said.

Chairperson of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Mandar City, Muhammad Ridwan Alimuddin who also as a speaker in the event said, in the current era, journalists there should be a lot of knowledge about journalism.

"There is no massive formation of journalists. Training for writing is only done by each media," Ridwan said in his material.

In addition, Ridwan hopes the perseverance of a journalist to be proactive in activities journalistic activities such as taking the Journalist Competency Test (UKW). "We at AJI have conducted training, such as the Google News Initiative Training Network training in 2018," he said.

Chairman of the Majene General Election Commission (KPU), Arsalin Aras stated that his pride could be gathered among journalists. According to him, journalists are partners of the government and agencies as a mouthpiece to the community.

"I really support activities like this because they add a lot of information about the world of journalism," Arsalin said.

This public discussion was attended by dozens of journalists from various mass media in West Sulawesi as well as college student. The moderator in the discussion was the editor in chief of the media online Masalembo.com, Harmegi Amin.

"Tonight is special for media activists and literacy in Majene Regency because of discussions like this is a step," said Harmegi.

Erisusanto