131009 JUST
DEFIANCE My Comment To The Guardian's “The rise of the reader:
journalism in the age of the open web” Edition
Katharine
Viner
theguardian.com,
Wednesday 9 October 2013 18.45 AEST
For my bad
bewitched upbringing, I am a lousy reader - ssslllooowww - no more
than a few words in each intake. So, while I've got the hots for
this article's writer, Ms Viner, I didn't read her speech as
transcribed here [in the title link above].
But I scanned it
and found the sentence I was looking for, so copied/pasted it and
away I wrent!
KingCommo
09 October 2013 2:31pm"Journalists need to be on the outside of all kinds of power - political, institutional, corporate. We are here to find things out which otherwise wouldn't be known -..." [ an extract from Katharine's piece ]
That about sums-up the dilemma of journalism today, if not always.
Further, to be able to report and investigate real and serious news-worthy issues, especially of a political nature, journalists have to be economically-independent from "...all kinds of power - political, institutional, corporate."
While a journo has to pay/sing for their supper, in forms of a buying/owning their own house/home, food, and any extras covering costs of raising kids, etc., let alone a nice sports car, or who expects they can live a "normal" mainstream upclub life, with a partner, friends, social and night life, employment security/opportunity/prospects, as they go fearlessly without favor to do their job/s, they are not/cannot be living up to the huge and hard real-politik expectations of a genuine journalist. The 1st thing they'll do is compromise their standards, quality/facts/exposures.
In days not so long passed, the tough fearless journalists rarely had families, were alcoholics as oft', drinking themselves to unconsciousness nightly, knowing anything could come through the door or window flaming or hot-leaded, for their rugged persistence against the powerful, ruthless, establishment corruptions and henchmen.
Even into the 1970s, a serious journo knew they could not have a wife or family, while they were dogged in researching and reporting against the massive extents of corruption, because the establishment's corrupt always controlled the police, and still do, so a disappearance/murder of one's beloved was always a possibility, and if it happened, the last people a journo could trust were the coppers. It's still the case today.
People simply do not get jobs as journalists now without bending their knee to the "...political, institutional, corporate" social controllers.
So the integrity of their work is compromised totally - hence the utter shit we endured through the 2013 federal election campaign.
But HEY! It's been going on like this for decades, and decades. At least, the clamps began being put on Quality, Honest Journalism after Brettonwoods, 1948, across the western hemisphere, and now, it's everywhere.
As I write, the only way we can guarantee honest, uncompromising, quality FACTUAL Journalism, is for journalists to be paid a stipend or such to ensure they will never be forced by economic pressures to sell-out.
The chances of that? HAHAHA!
Were civil society ORGANIZED, however, we would firstly have good government, so little or no need for tough, fearless journalists.
But were we, we would organize an entirely independent fund for journalists, to which everyone would contribute an equitable amount.
My detractors will mock.
But little do they understand how crucial, honest and all-the-facts-ma'am media is, and that it does need it's employees to be secure in their craft, so they can go to the hard issues knowing they will not be on the scrap heap because their report exposed an Obeid, or Murdoch, or Stalin.
And, because they have taken the silver of an upper class, church-corruption upbringing, so are posited in very comfy-fanny-pads, thang-you, little do they, my detractors, or most any of our politicians, and today's media, care.
JUST
DEFIANCE
Brayakooloong
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