Journalist

Journalist link Corbett Report ModernHistoryProject Sourcewatch
File:Journalist.png
Type	job

Journalists write stories for newspapers which are part of the commercially-controlled media.

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Journalist |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=George Seldes|+sep=, |Has text=“Journalism's job is not impartial 'balanced' reporting. Journalism's job is to tell the people what is really going on.” |Is about=Journalist,Journalism, truth,Corporate media/Mendacity|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=http://www.declarepeace.org.uk/

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“Journalism's job is not impartial 'balanced' reporting. Journalism's job is to tell the people what is really going on.”
George Seldes

Official narrative

Journalism should be unbiased and independent, avoid "fake news" and be impartial in reporting of the facts, giving due attention to official sources and the opinions of qualified experts. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Journalist |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=John Swinton|+sep=, |Has text=“There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.” |Is about=Journalist,Corporate media/Deep state control, Corporate media|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails=https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=

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“There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
John Swinton

Official Sources

Prominent journalist John Pilger has observed that the media consolidation of the late 20th and early 21st centuries was associated with an abandonment of the practice of "investigative journalism", leading to an over-reliance on "official (establishment) sources". A pervasive climate of fear and subservience discourages professional journalists from questioning official narratives. Tony Gosling notes that even very popular television shows such as The Cook Report and World in Action were discontinued, because they were an embarrassment to the interests of deep pocketed advertisers. It is unclear to what extent this was a deliberately engineered outcome, to what extent a byproduct of other economic trends.

"Fake News"

Full article: Fake News

Traditionally, the fact that journalists were paid professionals meant that they could be easily controlled by editors, just as editors could be controlled by publishers. In modern times, however, the apparatus of mass communication (i.e. the internet) has become accessible to people without great expenditure, and publishing requires little effort. As a result, the role of journalists has been somewhat eclipsed by bloggers or other amateurs who are more independent. This represents a challenge for the deep state control of corporate media. Beginning in 2016, the deep state introduced the phrase "fake news website" to try to scare people back towards newspapers.

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Journalist |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Robert Fisk|+sep=, |Has text=“And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.” |Is about=Journalist,war, authority, resistance, obedience|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/journalism.html?p=32

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“And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.”
Robert Fisk

Investigative journalism

Investigative journalism, as opposed to yellow journalism, is journalism based on on official sources but reliant on private investigation, typically into wrongdoing. {{#subobject: |Has superobject=Journalist |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Gary Webb|+sep=, |Has text=“If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.” |Is about=Journalist,Corporate media/Deep state control, Corporate media, Corporate media/Mendacity|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate= |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails=https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/444200-dark-alliance-the-cia-the-contras-and-the-crack-cocaine-explosion |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=

}}

“If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn't work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.”
Gary Webb

Premature deaths

Full article: Journalist/Premature death

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=Journalist |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Gary Webb|+sep=, |Has text=“This story of CIA drug dealing became a sensation because of the website, not because of the story, but because people could get to it. And they could never have gotten to it before because the San Jose Mercury News is a small regional newspaper in Northern California that you couldn't read if you lived in New York or you couldn't read if you lived in L.A.. But this story you could read anywhere in the world.” |Is about=Journalist,CIA/Drug dealing, crack cocaine, Corporate media/Deep state control, Corporate media, San Jose Mercury News|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=2003 |Sourced from=GNN |Has sourceDetails=GNN Video |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName=GNN |Has sourceURL=

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“This story of CIA drug dealing became a sensation because of the website, not because of the story, but because people could get to it. And they could never have gotten to it before because the San Jose Mercury News is a small regional newspaper in Northern California that you couldn't read if you lived in New York or you couldn't read if you lived in L.A.. But this story you could read anywhere in the world.”
Gary Webb (2003) 

Gary Webb (whose Dark Alliance series on the CIA's cocaine trafficking was the first to illustrate that the World Wide Web could rival 20^th century corporate media such as television, radio and newspapers) stated in 2003 that he thought investigative journalism was being intentionally "squeezed out of the picture because it tends to ruffle feathers". Like several journalists on this site, he later died suddenly.

Non-investigative journalists

Tony Gosling stated in 2018 that he thought that investigative journalism in the UK was dramatically cut in the 1990s after the film about Operation Gladio by Alan Francovich that was broadcast on BBC2. The general reluctance to carry out basic investigation coupled with an ability to quickly rebroadcast information has meant that confirmation bias has become a highly significant factor in shaping public perceptions. At one extreme, this has lead to miscarriages of justice on a personal level, to the extent that "a single “sexist” remark being sufficient for conviction in the court of social media." The same phenomenon allows official narratives about deep events to be widely promulgated, seemingly in defiance of common sense. In the 21^st century in particular, funding for real investigations is being cut back to almost nothing, leaving journalists reliant upon material provided by authorities or corporations.

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References