Journalists: Are Any Of Them Not ****s?
Discussion
BruceV8 said:
There was an obituary in the Telegraph today of a photo-journalist, apparently well respected and who in later life did good things for charity. But his career was made on pictures of struggling starving kids in Africa. Nowhere did it say that he ever fed them.
difficult one.one man could help a few with food.
but by taking pictures and showing the rest of us what was happening he had as much much larger effect (population of etheopia quadrupled i belive after live aid et al ).
we all then started to feed them because of these pictures.
BruceV8 said:
Are you a journalist nayf? I would love there to be more good ones. 
(Ps I'm sober now. )
I have that dubious honour. (Ps I'm sober now.
)I'm not going to write some tedious defence of the profession because, frankly, the most visible parts of it contain some of the most vile examples of the human breed ever vomited into existence.
What I will say is that, as alluded to earlier in the thread, due to the amount of consumption in today's society, you only tend to notice the awful examples. At a national level, not only was it a journalist who broke the expenses scandal, but it was another who uncovered the NOTW's grubby dealings.
As a result of this, I expect press freedoms to tighten considerably. That IS a bad thing - not because I'm desperate to know where John Terry's putting his John Thomas, but because the slightly morally dubious techniques used to gather such information has gathered very important exposes on corruption in the past. However, it's a process I feel the media has to go through to to come to terms with its own excesses. Common or garden journalists such as I have moaned to each other about how the red tops are tarnishing the rest of us, but we were not loud enough. Now we will all have to suck it up, and rightly so.
With regards to journalists themselves, most of those I encounter rejoiced at the loss of the NOTW, the public BBQing of Piers Morgan and the like. What people need to understand is that there's a surreal disconnect between national newspapers and the rest of the industry.
Try to picture it thus: the media world is like a bus full of excitable toddlers on a school trip and waiting in a car park. The regional papers and the magazines are generally well behaved, but occasionally fall into the mud. But the nationals? They're screaming and shouting, jumping up and down in the mud, spraying the rest of the toddlers with their secondhand mud.
As for journalists being ****s... well, no less than can be applied generally to other jobs that deal so often with the darker elements of human endeavour. Would I have become this misanthropic, cynical and miserable if I'd have sold kitchen supplies? The stereotype of the burned-out hack is a stereotype for a reason.
The reasons why can be revealed in some of the testimonies of the people giving evidence – workplace bullying is rife, and easy to get away with as if someone complains, there's always a naiive idealist waiting in the wings, ready to work awful shifts to earn a pittance rewriting press releases. I think a starting salary after a university degree is around £13,000 these days. You see the very worst of the human world, and to subscribe to the editorial line you can't go anywhere near it. In fact, the restrictions on press freedom mean that you can't really do much anyway. Yes, journalists can be scum - but we only reflect the scum that we all, as humans, can become at some point or another. Look at Paul McMullan - it's very easy to hate him, but he's just been moulded by the news editors and senior management. The actual journalists just do what they are told, otherwise they are binned off, or made redundant at the earliest opportunity. Most give up and go into PR. Some give up completely.
The news agenda is set by what readers want - millions of people bought the NOTW. If people didn't want the awfulness, then the press wouldn't print it. The Mirror commissioned a study in the 1960s about what people wanted from their newspapers. The results showed that people wanted less sex and violence and so on. So the Mirror complied and as all the scandal trickled away, so did the readership. It flowed to The Sun... and look where that ended up.
This doesn't excuse the terrible media ethics being uncovered at the Leveson inquiry, but it does explain things a little.
I currently don't work in newspapers - to borrow a phrase from Fight Club, it's like polishing the brass on the Titanic (look at the job losses over the past ten years) – and I feel all the better for it. It's not as glamorous as the lofty ambitions I had when I was 14, when I was plonked in front of a computer program and told to define my life - for the record, journalist came third after novel writer and musician – but it's better for my soul, such as it is.
Looking back on writing this post, I've probably shot myself in the foot in terms of getting on to a motoring publication (that was the dream years ago) but I guess that ship had sailed a long time ago anyway. Oh well... But I feel I do have to point out that not all journalists are the same. While many do end up being bitter, misanthropic alcoholics, the majority do a lot of good work for the public good along the way.
However, if you have a child that expresses an interest in becoming a journalist, do encourage him or her not to do it – the costs to them as a person in relation to the tangible benefits are just not worthwhile.
Edited by nayf on Saturday 31st December 14:18
Edited by nayf on Saturday 31st December 14:20
nayf said:
I have that dubious honour.
Thanks for that.My son is a journalist. When I started to edit a magazine he bought me a book on the morals of journalists. I said something along the lines of it being a bit over 7000 circulation so he was going a bit OTT but he was adamant that without proper limits all the way through the whole profession suffers.
It is true that the worst ones are those who stick in the mind. We should not forget Woodwood and Bernstein, reporters on the Washington Post, who exposed the Watergate scandal. We should also not forget that given the much publicised decisions of judges like Eady, it is certain that such an expose would not be allowed to happen in this country in the same way nowadays.
We should not, I suppose, forget that other presidents were just as, perhaps more, corrupt than Nixon.
The freedom of the press is a balance, and one that we have not got quite right at the moment. Once politicians, lawyers and judges are brought in then freedom of information is the first casualty. I don't give a damn about what Terry is doing and this probably goes for the majority of this country. The odd thing is that I would not have discovered who he'd been knocking off without him trying to keep it from me.
All freedom costs. It is, I suppose, easy enough for me to suggest that Terry is one of the casualties and he should accept it when there is little likelihood of me being doorstepped. But that doesn't stop it from being true.
Thanks for the post.
BruceV8 said:
Its late so I might not be as articulate as I'd like.
I've had a fairly low opinion of journalists for about fifteen years now. In fact my FB post of just now kind of sums up my view of them: 'A journalist is a person who, if he found you bleeding to death, wouldn't apply first aid but would take some damn fine pictures of you dying'.
I didn't always think like this. My brother was a photo-journalist for a long time and a friend started in the back room of a photo agency and is now a very successful 'paparazzi' dude in New York. But for all their 'crusading after the truth' I can't help but think that they would sell their soul - and yours - for a scoop.
There was an obituary in the Telegraph today of a photo-journalist, apparently well respected and who in later life did good things for charity. But his career was made on pictures of struggling starving kids in Africa. Nowhere did it say that he ever fed them.
There's a book by some dude who was a journalist during the Bosnian war - 'My War Gone By, I Miss It So'. In it he describes how he intervened in an incident and saved someone's life but was then criticised by other journos for lacking the necessary detachment. Apparently they were there to observe, not participate, as if the world was a massive social science experiment.
My general uneasy feeling about them, which had been growing for a good few years, was crystallised during the Iraq war and particularly the early stages of the insurgency. They would demand transport, facilities and protection from coalition forces yet would stab them as soon as the first inkling of a story might emerge. Yet whenever a journalist was killed, injured, or even mildly threatened that was given airtime and print space over all other things. There's a quote - I wish I could remeber who by - that said: A foreign correspondent is someone who thinks the most important thing about a story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.
The phone hacking thig is too well documented elsewhere to bother with here but thats only the latest thing. I know that some journalists do good, moral, work and many stories need airing, but on the whole they seem to me to be a plague of leeches, reporting and criticising other peoples actions but doing nothing themselves. The freedom of the press should be a wonderful thing but the people who are the press give it a bad name. Or so it seems to me.....
You do realise that there are tens of thousands of journalists who write about things they're passionate about, completely insignificant things, things you're passionate about, right? I've had a fairly low opinion of journalists for about fifteen years now. In fact my FB post of just now kind of sums up my view of them: 'A journalist is a person who, if he found you bleeding to death, wouldn't apply first aid but would take some damn fine pictures of you dying'.
I didn't always think like this. My brother was a photo-journalist for a long time and a friend started in the back room of a photo agency and is now a very successful 'paparazzi' dude in New York. But for all their 'crusading after the truth' I can't help but think that they would sell their soul - and yours - for a scoop.
There was an obituary in the Telegraph today of a photo-journalist, apparently well respected and who in later life did good things for charity. But his career was made on pictures of struggling starving kids in Africa. Nowhere did it say that he ever fed them.
There's a book by some dude who was a journalist during the Bosnian war - 'My War Gone By, I Miss It So'. In it he describes how he intervened in an incident and saved someone's life but was then criticised by other journos for lacking the necessary detachment. Apparently they were there to observe, not participate, as if the world was a massive social science experiment.
My general uneasy feeling about them, which had been growing for a good few years, was crystallised during the Iraq war and particularly the early stages of the insurgency. They would demand transport, facilities and protection from coalition forces yet would stab them as soon as the first inkling of a story might emerge. Yet whenever a journalist was killed, injured, or even mildly threatened that was given airtime and print space over all other things. There's a quote - I wish I could remeber who by - that said: A foreign correspondent is someone who thinks the most important thing about a story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.
The phone hacking thig is too well documented elsewhere to bother with here but thats only the latest thing. I know that some journalists do good, moral, work and many stories need airing, but on the whole they seem to me to be a plague of leeches, reporting and criticising other peoples actions but doing nothing themselves. The freedom of the press should be a wonderful thing but the people who are the press give it a bad name. Or so it seems to me.....
It's actually a small minority that work for publications like tabloids and newspapers.
Your post is rather ignorant and offensive.
nayf said:
BruceV8 said:
Are you a journalist nayf? I would love there to be more good ones.
(Ps I'm sober now. )
I have that dubious honour. (Ps I'm sober now.
)I'm not going to write some tedious defence of the profession because, frankly, the most visible parts of it contain some of the most vile examples of the human breed ever vomited into existence.
What I will say is that, as alluded to earlier in the thread, due to the amount of consumption in today's society, you only tend to notice the awful examples. At a national level, not only was it a journalist who broke the expenses scandal, but it was another who uncovered the NOTW's grubby dealings.
As a result of this, I expect press freedoms to tighten considerably. That IS a bad thing - not because I'm desperate to know where John Terry's putting his John Thomas, but because the slightly morally dubious techniques used to gather such information has gathered very important exposes on corruption in the past. However, it's a process I feel the media has to go through to to come to terms with its own excesses. Common or garden journalists such as I have moaned to each other about how the red tops are tarnishing the rest of us, but we were not loud enough. Now we will all have to suck it up, and rightly so.
With regards to journalists themselves, most of those I encounter rejoiced at the loss of the NOTW, the public BBQing of Piers Morgan and the like. What people need to understand is that there's a surreal disconnect between national newspapers and the rest of the industry.
Try to picture it thus: the media world is like a bus full of excitable toddlers on a school trip and waiting in a car park. The regional papers and the magazines are generally well behaved, but occasionally fall into the mud. But the nationals? They're screaming and shouting, jumping up and down in the mud, spraying the rest of the toddlers with their secondhand mud.
As for journalists being ****s... well, no less than can be applied generally to other jobs that deal so often with the darker elements of human endeavour. Would I have become this misanthropic, cynical and miserable if I'd have sold kitchen supplies? The stereotype of the burned-out hack is a stereotype for a reason.
The reasons why can be revealed in some of the testimonies of the people giving evidence – workplace bullying is rife, and easy to get away with as if someone complains, there's always a naiive idealist waiting in the wings, ready to work awful shifts to earn a pittance rewriting press releases. I think a starting salary after a university degree is around £13,000 these days. You see the very worst of the human world, and to subscribe to the editorial line you can't go anywhere near it. In fact, the restrictions on press freedom mean that you can't really do much anyway. Yes, journalists can be scum - but we only reflect the scum that we all, as humans, can become at some point or another. Look at Paul McMullan - it's very easy to hate him, but he's just been moulded by the news editors and senior management. The actual journalists just do what they are told, otherwise they are binned off, or made redundant at the earliest opportunity. Most give up and go into PR. Some give up completely.
The news agenda is set by what readers want - millions of people bought the NOTW. If people didn't want the awfulness, then the press wouldn't print it. The Mirror commissioned a study in the 1960s about what people wanted from their newspapers. The results showed that people wanted less sex and violence and so on. So the Mirror complied and as all the scandal trickled away, so did the readership. It flowed to The Sun... and look where that ended up.
This doesn't excuse the terrible media ethics being uncovered at the Leveson inquiry, but it does explain things a little.
I currently don't work in newspapers - to borrow a phrase from Fight Club, it's like polishing the brass on the Titanic (look at the job losses over the past ten years) – and I feel all the better for it. It's not as glamorous as the lofty ambitions I had when I was 14, when I was plonked in front of a computer program and told to define my life - for the record, journalist came third after novel writer and musician – but it's better for my soul, such as it is.
Looking back on writing this post, I've probably shot myself in the foot in terms of getting on to a motoring publication (that was the dream years ago) but I guess that ship had sailed a long time ago anyway. Oh well... But I feel I do have to point out that not all journalists are the same. While many do end up being bitter, misanthropic alcoholics, the majority do a lot of good work for the public good along the way.
However, if you have a child that expresses an interest in becoming a journalist, do encourage him or her not to do it – the costs to them as a person in relation to the tangible benefits are just not worthwhile.
Edited by nayf on Saturday 31st December 14:18
Edited by nayf on Saturday 31st December 14:20
Elroy Blue said:
After 20 years as a Police Officer, I've witnessed countless examples of utter lies published by the press. Intrusion into the families of victims, without any thought to the damage they do. My opinion of them wouldn't get passes the swear filter
And again, another sweeping stereotype that does nobody any good. I'd have thought that a policeman of all people would recognise the stupidity of lumping one group of people in together. Some policemen are bent, nasty f
kers. Does that mean that all of them are? Some people seem to think so. Do you liked being lumped in that category? I'd suspect not - and I bet you'd appreciate it if ignorant stereotypes wouldn't stir up trouble between the public and the police. Oddly enough, the same applies for the press. Some of them are utter scum. A lot of them work for the big newspapers. Equally, there are tens of thousands of perfectly pleasant people - people who write about football, people who write about music, people who write about cars, people who write about computers, people who write about plumbing, people who write for magazines and websites about every area you can possibly think of; you've just tarred them all with a s
tty stick, out of ignorance, after dealing with a small portion of the press.Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:16
pthelazyjourno said:
Elroy Blue said:
After 20 years as a Police Officer, I've witnessed countless examples of utter lies published by the press. Intrusion into the families of victims, without any thought to the damage they do. My opinion of them wouldn't get passes the swear filter
And again, another sweeping stereotype that does nobody any good. I'd have thought that a policeman of all people would recognise the stupidity of lumping one group of people in together. Some policemen are bent, nasty f
kers. Does that mean that all of them are? Some people definitely think so. Do you liked being lumped in that category? I'd suspect not - and I bet you'd appreciate it if ignorant stereotypes wouldn't stir up trouble between the public and the police. Oddly enough, the same applies for the press. Some of them are utter scum. Oddly enough a lot of them work for the big newspapers. Equally, there are tens of thousands of perfectly pleasant people you've just tarred with a s
tty stick, out of ignorance, after dealing with a small portion of the press. "It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it."
The utterly superb, John Pilger.
http://johnpilger.com/
The utterly superb, John Pilger.
http://johnpilger.com/
Pothole said:
ut don't you all aspire to work for the 'big newspapers, making the scum your role models? Or are you all delusional idealists?
Prey tell, why do I have to fit into either of your two ill-conceived categories? I haven't applied for one job in the past decade - all the work I've done has been because people have recommended me - I happen to be good at what I do. If I wanted to work for a "big newspaper", believe me I'd work for one.
You'd be just as accurate if you'd guessed that all athletes aspire to be footballers, with Wayne Rooney as their role model. Bizarrely, not all journalists write about the same things.
And, most journalists don't want to either. People tend to stick to their own areas of expertise - as in any other industry.
If you take a look at the money the vast majority of journalists get paid, you'll realise that most have picked a career that they're passionate about, accepting s
te wages on the basis that there are plenty more people who'll happily write about things they love for a pittance. So idealists? Quite possibly. Delusional? Well I'm doing a job I love - not many people on here seem to say that.
Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:36
pthelazyjourno said:
Pothole said:
ut don't you all aspire to work for the 'big newspapers, making the scum your role models? Or are you all delusional idealists?
Prey tell, why do I have to fit into either of your two ill-conceived categories? I haven't applied for one job in the past decade - all the work I've done has been because people have recommended me - I happen to be good at what I do. If I wanted to work for a "big newspaper", believe me I'd work for one.
You'd be just as accurate if you'd guessed that all athletes aspire to be footballers, with Wayne Rooney as their role model. Bizarrely, not all journalists write about the same things.
And, most journalists don't want to either. People tend to stick to their own areas of expertise - as in any other industry.
If you take a look at the money the vast majority of journalists get paid, you'll realise that most have picked a career that they're passionate about, accepting s
te wages on the basis that there are plenty more people who'll happily write about things they love for a pittance. So idealists? Quite possibly. Delusional? Well I'm doing a job I love - not many people on here seem to say that.
Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:36
I thought people who write for a living generally have an interest in being understood and communicating. That surely means they learn the language they intend to communicate in, consider what they write and check it before clicking 'submit', doesn't it?
The ability to recognise a closed question is clearly underrated, too.
Pothole said:
ut don't you all aspire to work for the 'big newspapers, making the scum your role models? Or are you all delusional idealists?
The only benefit of a national newspaper would be slightly more pay.However, personally, the "costs" are far too much in terms of what you have to agree to and do, so for that reason I'm out.
And anyway, there has to be a degree of idealism to do any job, doesn't there? Sadly mine's run out, but that's another thread for another time.
elroyblue said:
. Intrusion into the families of victims, without any thought to the damage they do.
I always struggled with this, and is why I ended up shying away from reporting. I raised it with a seasoned reporter and he explained it thus - a lot of families want to tell their side of the story about their loved one, to have some sort of closure and pay tribute to them.However, I disagree with the 'a lot' bit. One of the main reason why I ended up where I did in the news process.
See, I'm not some evil hack. I've not even listened to any of your voicemails!
Pothole said:
PrAY tell, why do you expect to be taken seriously when you don't appear to know how to write in the language you write in, if you see what I mean.
I thought people who write for a living generally have an interest in being understood and communicating. That surely means they learn the language they intend to communicate in, consider what they write and check it before clicking 'submit', doesn't it?
The ability to recognise a closed question is clearly underrated, too.
Yes, because that word clearly stopped you from understanding the post, didn't it. I thought people who write for a living generally have an interest in being understood and communicating. That surely means they learn the language they intend to communicate in, consider what they write and check it before clicking 'submit', doesn't it?
The ability to recognise a closed question is clearly underrated, too.
Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:56
pthelazyjourno said:
And again, another sweeping stereotype that does nobody any good. I'd have thought that a policeman of all people would recognise the stupidity of lumping one group of people in together.
Some policemen are bent, nasty fkers. Does that mean that all of them are? Some people seem to think so. Do you liked being lumped in that category? I'd suspect not - and I bet you'd appreciate it if ignorant stereotypes wouldn't stir up trouble between the public and the police.
Oddly enough, the same applies for the press. Some of them are utter scum. A lot of them work for the big newspapers. Equally, there are tens of thousands of perfectly pleasant people - people who write about football, people who write about music, people who write about cars, people who write about computers, people who write about plumbing, people who write for magazines and websites about every area you can possibly think of; you've just tarred them all with a stty stick, out of ignorance, after dealing with a small portion of the press.
The contact I've had with the press involves them completely making stories up, demanding details of the dead before families have been informed (And I mean demand). Ignoring facts that they've been told becuase it doesn't fit into the spin they want to put on things and camping out on families doorsteps regardless of their wishes. It hasn't been a minor percentage and local rags are the worst (aside from the Daily Wail, an utter joke of a publication)Some policemen are bent, nasty f
kers. Does that mean that all of them are? Some people seem to think so. Do you liked being lumped in that category? I'd suspect not - and I bet you'd appreciate it if ignorant stereotypes wouldn't stir up trouble between the public and the police. Oddly enough, the same applies for the press. Some of them are utter scum. A lot of them work for the big newspapers. Equally, there are tens of thousands of perfectly pleasant people - people who write about football, people who write about music, people who write about cars, people who write about computers, people who write about plumbing, people who write for magazines and websites about every area you can possibly think of; you've just tarred them all with a s
tty stick, out of ignorance, after dealing with a small portion of the press.Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:16
pthelazyjourno said:
Pothole said:
PrAY tell, why do you expect to be taken seriously when you don't appear to know how to write in the language you write in, if you see what I mean.
I thought people who write for a living generally have an interest in being understood and communicating. That surely means they learn the language they intend to communicate in, consider what they write and check it before clicking 'submit', doesn't it?
The ability to recognise a closed question is clearly underrated, too.
Yes, because that word clearly stopped you from understanding the post, didn't it. I thought people who write for a living generally have an interest in being understood and communicating. That surely means they learn the language they intend to communicate in, consider what they write and check it before clicking 'submit', doesn't it?
The ability to recognise a closed question is clearly underrated, too.
Edited by pthelazyjourno on Saturday 31st December 17:56
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