Contemporary mass media: a journalist’s responsibility

The article views a circle of issues connected with the responsibility of contemporary work of media for the quality of information. The metalanguage actual for the new Russian media sphere is generalized. All types of up-to-date information resources are viewed and classified. The types and forms of their content variation are analysed. Special attention is paid to a new information phenomenon – infonoise – whose harmful nature is revealed. Among intended and unintended fluctuations of the language norm there is a process of constructing createmes as a means of communicative freedom, expressivisation and emotionalisation of the media discourse. The journalists are reminded of their responsibility for the quality of information presented to the public. A most significant definition of responsibility including all its necessary notional specifiers is introduced. The absence of these specifiers is illustrated in the information materials, which impedes adequate understanding of them by the mass media consumers and does not lead to the unified reflection. It is stated that the most important of these specifiers is the truthfulness of information. Special attention is paid to the ecological risks of the irresponsibility of some journalists in regard to their fishing, transmitting and broadcasting low-quality information. Emphasis is put on the fact that the practice of journalists represents a specific communicative sphere, which often disorients information consumers. This fact is mostly obvious in connection with incompliance of mass media in a common methodology of presenting information, which has resulted in destruction of the dialogue function of mass media: only the Internet still preserves this function. Highlighted is the role of the language in creating linguistic reality as opposed to the objective one.