This week, the media analysis topic was immersive journalism. The teams talked about two well-known VR journalism films: The Displaced and Clouds Over Sidra. One of the teams argued that The Displaced pushed further into journalism and evoked empathy, created awareness, and affected change, while Clouds Over Sidra pushed further into storytelling. I found The Displaced interesting because it had translated text in the VR, which opens up so many beneficial opportunities in our world of globalization. The ability to physically see live translation would be an amazing future innovation because it can instantly could break down so many barriers and tensions between people who speak different languages.
The Central Question: Does storytelling compromise the authenticity of journalism?
I believe storytelling definitely negatively affects the authenticity of journalism. Journalists in general can never deliver the one hundred percent truth, and they can never be completely unbiased. Therefore, Virtual Reality in journalism creates a dangerous path for inaccurate news, since viewers tend to believe they know everything once put into that world through VR, when in reality they are seeing only the tiniest fraction. As with any news, the viewers need to be aware that what they see is not the complete truth, and it is only a small fraction of it.
