"Give Light and the people will find their own way."

In connection with the last blog... I'm going to further discuss truth. On Tuesday in class we had a journey to the past as we looked at where the press and media all started. The press has come a long way since the 1700's, where "news" was brought over by a ship and or letter and just reprinted (without checking the facts). Being biased or remaining objective wasn't really a concern for these early journalists. Throughout the years, news has changed and advanced in many different ways... all of which to make the newspaper more profitable.
In class we discussed journalism as a business... and as much as we journalist would like to think otherwise... money is a HUGE factor in our industry. You have to make money in order to get paid and have the resources needed for good journalism. Unfortunately, the need to make money costs journalism to sometimes not be at it's peak. For example, one of the news stations' parent company is GE. They did a story on one of the largest jet engine planes and had a reporter standing in one of the engines. This is major PR for GE... but then a week or so later this same plane crashes (due to mechanical issues) ... what is this news station going to do? If we as journalists keep our first loyalties to the truth and to the public... then of course the story would air. However, this parent company of course would not like the bad publicity and could ultimately hurt the new station.
We as journalist will have to make these ethical decisions all the time. We will have to decide between telling the story as it is, regardless of what it will do to our financial support, or to forgo the story so that those ties aren't severed. Ideally we think that we should always be reporting the facts and covering what the public needs to know, but sometimes a little cash stands in the way of true journalism.
This sounds really cynical, and sometimes I think that I'm becoming more and more cynical each day... bad. BUT! That's why I've struggled in deciding whether I want to continue going into journalism or do something else. I don't want people telling me I can't run a story because we'll lose money (if the story is important), but journalism is soo important!! It gives a voice to the voiceless... brings awareness to the people and helps them to make decisions and to take action.
Brother Campbell talked about the difference between "Gotcha" journalism and "Civic" or "Public" journalism. Gotcha is all about getting headlines and it victimizes the people, making them feel hopeless. Public journalism leads to involvement and educates the community. Now is the time for journalist to do just that... to help the people! There's a quote from the Masthead of Scripps Co. Newspapers that says, "Give Light and the people will find their own way."