Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns -- when the article or book appears -- his hard lesson.
From Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer
Comments (1)
Thank you!
Personally, I tend to compare journalists to mercenaries. It's really clear in my mind what the association is but it's difficult to verbalize in a way that makes sense to most people. Malcolm's analogy is easier to understand and achieves pretty much the same effect, IMHO.
It could be fun to look at those opinion polls about different jobs, which are frequently discussed in mass media. IIRC, a few years ago, journalists were listed as less trustworthy than politicians in one such poll. Typically, do-gooders top such lists and journalists tend to associate themselves with do-gooders, especially those journalists who are also idealists.
One thing I try to be clear on is that it's the work they do that I have problems with, not the people who do it.
Thanks again for the thought-provoking quote!
Posted by Alexandre | July 1, 2007 1:03 PM
Posted on July 1, 2007 13:03