My latest Examiner piece – on the obligations of journalists as citizens – is up. The points won’t be new to folks who’ve read about it here – but it will be interetsing to see what kind of reaction it gets on a wider stage.
My latest Examiner piece – on the obligations of journalists as citizens – is up. The points won’t be new to folks who’ve read about it here – but it will be interetsing to see what kind of reaction it gets on a wider stage.
Marc, I have a problem with the last paragraph of your piece:
While you may believe that, properly informed, American journalists with “our best interests” will report the news in a way less likely to oppose greater American interests actively, frankly, I’m not convinced that in practice that’s true. I suspect that journalists who report all the bad news, none of the good sincerely believe they have our best interests at heart.
I don’t think the problem is reconcilable within the scope of professional journalistic practice and that competition for the reader’s or viewer’s attention between professionals and amateurs is more likely to more likely to achieve a palatable result. Don’t underestimate even tiny bloggers like me. I recently was interviewed by a reporter for a small, local newspaper. He asked me what my traffic was. I told him. He said, “Wow, you have more readers than we do.”
I’d like to think that journalists were equipt to place their responsibilities as citizens and their responsibilities as journalists into proportion but I don’t think it will happen.
Cripes, the last thing I want is journalists with my “best interests” at heart. They’ll be doing stories all day about how I shouldn’t own guns, shouldn’t eat meat, shouldn’t have children, shouldn’t commute by car, shouldn’t support the war, shouldn’t do this or that or whatever the hell journalists don’t approve of. I agree that it would be nice if they weren’t actively wishing me ill, which it often seems they do.
Road to hell, etc.
_”They’ll be doing stories all day about how I shouldn’t own guns, shouldn’t eat meat, shouldn’t have children, shouldn’t commute by car, shouldn’t support the war, shouldn’t do this or that or whatever the hell journalists don’t approve of.”_
So how would we distinguish between what they do now?