Mainstream journalism’s traditional function may be quietly changing. The adage-description of journalism’s fundamental function can remain the same, but revision of terminological representation is definitely in order. While it remains “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” there may be an alteration to what/who constitute…
Mainstream journalism’s traditional function may be quietly changing. The adage-description of journalism’s fundamental function can remain the same, but revision of terminological representation is definitely in order. While it remains “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” there may be an alteration to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
As a good contemporary example, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting includes the Israeli government and IDF in their mass-slaughter of Gazan innocents when in the past it would've been more likely (and rightly) the Palestinian civilians, as the latter resist having their ancestral lands gradually annexed and being cleansed from it [an inverse David versus Goliath].
Western corporate news outlets, including Canada's otherwise-socially-progressive Toronto Star and Globe and Mail metro-daily papers, are either complicit in or actually support Israel’s continuing campaign of inflicting mass suffering and slaughter in Gaza. Too many have lost too much of their journalistic/editorial independence, ethics and even humanity.
Journalists and editors with genuine integrity would tender their resignations and publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s corrupt media product (be it from the Right or Left). It’s their ethical/moral duty to publicly call-out the self-compromised mainstream news-media for which they work(ed).
By doing so, such brave journalists/editors can at least then proclaim they will no longer complacently or complicitly assist in the corrupted news-media product’s creation and/or dissemination.
I hear of too many cases of employees not standing up in such situations to do what is necessary for the public or human good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I needed to keep this job; I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their complacency/complicity.
Mainstream journalism’s traditional function may be quietly changing. The adage-description of journalism’s fundamental function can remain the same, but revision of terminological representation is definitely in order. While it remains “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” there may be an alteration to what/who constitutes an “afflicted” and “the comfortable”.
As a good contemporary example, the new “afflicted” requiring news-media comforting includes the Israeli government and IDF in their mass-slaughter of Gazan innocents when in the past it would've been more likely (and rightly) the Palestinian civilians, as the latter resist having their ancestral lands gradually annexed and being cleansed from it [an inverse David versus Goliath].
Western corporate news outlets, including Canada's otherwise-socially-progressive Toronto Star and Globe and Mail metro-daily papers, are either complicit in or actually support Israel’s continuing campaign of inflicting mass suffering and slaughter in Gaza. Too many have lost too much of their journalistic/editorial independence, ethics and even humanity.
Journalists and editors with genuine integrity would tender their resignations and publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s corrupt media product (be it from the Right or Left). It’s their ethical/moral duty to publicly call-out the self-compromised mainstream news-media for which they work(ed).
By doing so, such brave journalists/editors can at least then proclaim they will no longer complacently or complicitly assist in the corrupted news-media product’s creation and/or dissemination.
I hear of too many cases of employees not standing up in such situations to do what is necessary for the public or human good, instead excusing themselves with something like: ‘I needed to keep this job; I have a family to support’. I’m afraid that — unless, of course, they were actually forced into coupling, copulating and procreating however many years before — such familial obligation status does not actually ethically or morally justify their complacency/complicity.