Reflections on Week One

This week in our first Journalism in Society lecture, we looked at what a journalist does.

No text can come up with a definitive definition as journalists cover so many varied roles, however in his book 'The Universal Journalist', David Randall sums it up best for me when he discusses the attributes of good journalists, saying the idea is "...above all things, to question..." He then lists the different ways journalists do this, including my favourite: "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

One of my favourite journalists, John Pilger, specialises in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable and I was pleased to see
one of his quotes used during the lecture. While some parts of his books are now out of date, and many of his documentaries appear old-fashioned and a bit daggy (safari suits, what was he thinking?) his adversarial journalistic style is one that I find very interesting. Maybe not the style for me at the moment, but certainly one to keep in mind. His website johnpilger.com has many articles and includes links to many of his documentaries (scroll down the video page and watch the ties get wider and the lapels longer!)

In two of his videos Pilger interviews another two journalists that I find interesting, Martha Gellhorn and Wilfred Burchett. Both of these writers had strong affinities with ordinary people and wrote of war and suffering from the point of view of the soldiers and civilians caught up in some of the twentieth centuries' worst conflicts. They, like Pilger today, were not impartial journalists. Some of the texts I've read this week say that journalists should present both sides of an argument and not get involved in the story. I see that as reasonable if reporting on a neighbourhood dispute or a council meeting, but not when telling stories of human pain and misery brought on by the schemes and antics of governments and powerful companies. 

I get angry watching John Pilger videos, angry that the British government can forcibly remove an entire people from their own islands so the US military can have an airforce base. I get angry that the Australian government sat idle for years while the people of East Timor suffered under a murderous Indonesian regime. I get angry that the British and US governments lied about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Is this anger a good thing? Well, maybe not for my blood pressure but it does give me something to aim for in my journalism.