Social media is becoming less and less trustworthy. With Meta’s recent decision to drop all fact-checking in the name of ‘free speech’ and Elon Musk using ‘X’ to promote his personal agendas, the platforms are quickly becoming a hotspot for misinformation and distrust. 

76% of Europeans are aware of misinformation being spread on social media, a survey done by the European Parliament shows.

The awareness that the platforms are not reliable sources of information, now more than ever, makes us all more wary of the information we get.

And unfortunately, it doesn’t stop at social media – it also bleeds into journalism…

As a journalist, I am painfully aware that newspapers and radio news are dying species and that TikToks and Instagram posts are quickly replacing them. In fact, 42% of Europeans use social media as their preferred source of information, meaning that journalism is becoming increasingly dependent on social media to survive.

It’s some sort of sick symbiotic relationship.

So as the socials become less trustworthy, so does journalism in the readers’ eyes.

I myself experienced this not too long ago when this Instagram post popped up on my feed.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by BBC News (@bbcnews)

It’s a post by the BBC, a globally respected news outlet.  But it was posted on Instagram… So naturally my first reaction was skepticism. Since our distrust of social media is so deep that it can make us doubt sources we otherwise wouldn’t think twice about trusting.

And that shows the issue with this symbiosis perfectly. Journalism is a profession built on credibility and trust that is now forced to operate in a space where those values are nowhere to be found. Because let’s face it, social media was never meant to be this serious.

 Instagram was made to post selfies, and TikTok started out as a lip-syncing app. These values were never supposed to be part of social media, as it was never intended to be the primary source of information for anyone.

And yet here we are, with almost half of the European population using it to get their daily news.

The use of social media has changed, and with it, the morals and values of the platforms should too. Because the untrustworthy platforms are not an appropriate place for serious journalism.

But as it stands now, news outlets and journalists have no option but to play along because without this toxic symbiosis, journalism would be doomed.

Text: Catharina Waterstradt
Photo: ©  Anna Shvets via Pexels