OPINION:
The journalist’s lot, like the policeman’s, is not a happy one. The overpaid prima donnas who posture in front of the cameras are not typical of the reporter or correspondent. The typical reporter is overworked and underpaid, an asset to his (or her) publication, and often considered to be only as good as their last story. They’re catching flak for “fake news” — not always without cause — and colleagues nearly everywhere are jailed, or worse, simply for doing their jobs. Civilized nations know better than to allow shooting the messenger.
The hostility that news gatherers face was underscored by the car bomb slaying in October of a Maltese reporter covering government corruption and by the subsequent arrest of 10 suspects. The explosion that claimed the life of reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia rocked the island nation of Malta, a member of the European Union, which is said to be cultured and refined. She is one of 37 journalists killed on assignment so far in 2017. Iraq and Syria have been the most lethal locales this year, with eight and seven deaths, respectively, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
A record 262 reporters on the beat have been jailed, surpassing last year’s figure of 259. Turkey is the worst offender, jailing 73 journalists in a government campaign to crack down on press freedom in the wake of a failed 2016 coup. China and Egypt are ranked second and third on the list of offending nations, with the jailing of 41 and 20 reporters, respectively.
“In a just society, no journalist should ever be imprisoned for [his] work and reporting critically, but 262 are paying that price,” says CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “It is shameful that for the second year in a row, a record number of journalists are behind bars.” Short of marching off to war, exposing the political and personal sins of persons in high places is one of the most dangerous ways to make a living. But only a free press can check the excesses of the powerful when they violate the public trust.
However, reporters and correspondents who substitute innuendo for fact should not be shielded from severe criticism. CPJ makes that mistake by charging that “repressive countries and U.S. President Donald Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric and insistence on labeling critical media ’fake news’ serves to reinforce the framework of accusations and legal charges that allow such leaders to preside over the jailing of journalists.” That’s not necessarily true.
The president usually calls out journalists by name — like Brian Ross of ABC News, whose inaccurate coverage of the Russian collision investigation has sullied his network’s reputation for accuracy. Men and women who do that cast a shadow over their colleagues, which is further expensive malpractice.
There’s no denying that some “news” is indeed fraudulent. The mushrooming phenomenon of social media horning in on the highly competitive news business, with their dodgy “news” accounts, sometimes tempts conventional news organizations to cross the line between fact and factoid — a factoid, in novelist Norman Mailer’s invention of the word, is something that looks like a fact and even smells like a fact but is in fact, not a fact. The imperative to get it first can override the obligation to get it right.
It’s natural for free men to hunger to know what’s happening down the street and across the world. The educated consumer knows to shop until he finds an honest broker of the news. But there’s nothing to be gained, and a lot to be lost, by shooting the messenger, however tempting that may be.
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