The journalist’s first priority, in theory, should be to objectivity, to balanced truth, to this lofty notion of the ‘public interest’. In practice, however, it is to their employers and ultimately to their advertisers; media is a business, a commercial enterprise and therein lays the fundamental conflict of interest in journalism. How do you critique the powerful when rely on the same powerful for your existence? For example if the state government threatens to pull their advertising from your paper cause of negative press, then what?
This quote stood out for me: ‘Newspaper design and packaging needs favour predictable stories that reduce journalists to the role of researchers’ (p:26).
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1 comment:
This is a dark view indeed. would you buy a paper without the stories? What sort of advertising would you buy?
Even if you use your newspaper to wrap the fish and chips, it still needs the news or what passes for it to sell. So how do we change what is written so that it does what it's meant to do.. and I dont mean keep the chips hot
Christina
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