Why critical journalism is crucial in world today

The Nation Media Group (NMG) recently appointed Odoobo Charles Bichachi as public editor. It is the very first time I heard of such a position. It is a first in Uganda - Bichachi will be the first journalist serving in that position.
Media houses in theory serve the public. A newspaper’s raison d’etre is the readership, but also the wider public that benefits from its information and knowledge dissemination. This means media organisations must pay heed to their audiences to better serve their needs.
Having a public editor, and especially one who is a vastly experienced and competent journalist like Bichachi, appears to be a good way of bringing NMG platforms in Uganda closer to the public.
But in serving the public, a newspaper or any other media organisation, cannot afford to pander to public emotions and sentiments. Sometimes, what is popular can also be dangerous. Because society is inherently heterogeneous, determining what is for the good of society is not without complication.
At any rate, Uganda today, much like the rest of the world, needs serious and probing journalism. This cannot be overemphasised. We live in an era of gross misinformation, sensationalism and cheap rhetoric.
Social media and the internet generally have revolutionised information flow in ways that are unprecedented. Yet precisely because of the democratisation and decentralisation of access to information, is the reason a newspaper like Daily (Saturday and Sunday) Monitor must invest in real journalism.
More than ever before, we need investigative journalism that goes beyond social media chatter and online rush, the newest shiny object. Reporting news from a press conference can now be done via Facebook or Twitter post. But neither Facebook nor Twitter is fully capable of comprehensive and deeply analytical take.
The Monitor brand, especially its weekend papers (Saturday Monitor and Sunday Monitor), has the track record and right intellectual orientation to do the kind of journalism that stands apart from the messiness we live with. It is journalism that can ask big and pertinent questions not salacious stories. The clientele for the latter may be out there and the temptation to try tapping is well-founded. The value to society, however, is difficult to defend.
Social media bombards us with surrealism. We need journalism to bring real analysis and factual reporting. To try to compete with social media in breaking stories makes no sense. There is a lot that only a newspaper with a strong institutional foundation can do.
The assault on the value of truth and the goal of seeking it, which predates social media in the West, is dangerous for a poor country like Uganda.
The rich West can afford to live with conspiracy theories and trade in alternatives facts precisely because their material and institutional advances can mitigate the dangers inherent in denying that we can have objective facts. By contrast, with all the endemic problems we face, both economic and social, the search for the truth based on facts is an overriding necessity for Uganda.

This cannot be achieved through the individualised and fragmented world of social media where everybody is an authority and everyone is potentially a source of news and facts.
There is no doubt that the old model of journalism needs a radical rethink. Major changes have happened at large Western newspapers like the New York Times and the NMG has done commendably well in keeping up with the pace of the times. What cannot be gainsaid is the critical role of institutionalised journalism that pursues public accountability while operating within the confines of specific rules and standards. Like a university, a new newspaper must serve the needs of the public. A university with the iron walls that shield it from the public is not worth its name. So is a newspaper.
But serving the public prudently also requires a certain level of organisational independence and being able to keep a reasonable distance so as to properly frame the issues, to ask apt questions and provide dispassionate answers, including uncomfortable ones. This is far more urgent today than ever before.