Journalist and Journalism ..........

On C-Span (2/28/08), a group of Journalist including John Burn, New York Times London Bureau Chief, and Nick Davies, Author of "Flate Earth News:......... were discussing "Influence of Foreign media on Global Issues." The discussion centered around many challenges faced by journalists such as possible complicity of news media with Power and the State, failure of news media to critically examine the WMD claims rather media played into the hands of the Power and the State, the challenge from flourishing public relation industry, and the realities of the new market place which is constricting journalists working conditions and profession.

John Burn's defensive statements for the New York Times were interesting. Mr Burn was acting as if he were a public relations spokes person for the New York Times rather than a journalist. Mr. Burn, are you really a journalist or something else you rather not share? Interesting as it was to hear John Burn's explanations in defense of the New York Times, he failed to acknowledge that journalists had failed to critically report Iraq's position as they had readily accepted and reported the positions taken by the Western States. There is no way to predict what might have had happened had journalists had taken a balanced critical views towards the rationale for the war. It is clear though that the profession of journalism failed to follow it's basic professional objective balanced reporting standard. And it is becoming clear by the day that Journalists consciously or unconsciously rather being neutral and objective were at best victims of their ignorance, or at worse the victims of their bias.


A time to ponder..........