Journalism : a way to manipulate ?

Hello there !

We started talking about the power and influence of medias in English class and I found the topic very interesting.

We had a discussion about the role of a journalist and I wanted to focus on that.

**Spoiler** A journalist is supposed to investigate and write articles to explain something, talk about a specific topic with honesty to inform us.

That part is very important. If a journalist doesn't give us the entire context, every single piece of information, we are most likely to misunderstand the thing and get everything wrong.

That is quite scary.

This is when you realize that the press can basically make you believe anything that  they want you to believe. They have the power, and quite a significant one. When I read an article on the newspaper or on Internet, I have the tendency to believe what is written, if it appears to be neutral anyway. I think it is a mistake we can all do when we don't know much about something whereas we should always doubt, always check out if what we've just read is legit. The point is medias can be very clever and we can be very naive. It's the perfect match, isn't it ?

Now, if we consider that journalists should always be neutral and give us all the information that we need to truly understand what this is all about, a bit like historians in a way, can they denounce things ?

I have thought about it for a few days and I still don't really know what do think about it.

Two points.

First of all, if a journalist starts denoucing things, whatever these things are, he necessarily has to take sides. He obviously has an opinion about it and he decides to share it with us. If he shares it, he is likely to influence our judgement. And shouldn't we be thinking by ourselves in front of an information ? If he denounces something, he will mispresent the main topic by having, quite often, a manichean point of view.

But on the other hand, a journalist is NOT an historian. Journalists simbolize freedom of speech. And who is more qualified than them to report publicy injustices, terrible things happening all around the world ? If this type of journalists can be considered as a treath by the government (seriously though, is there still something to understand in policy anyway ?), I personally think they can be a precious help for oppressed groups who don't have the opportunity to act and do something.

The thing is, I believe there isn't such things as  "universal journalism".

There are so many different types of journalisms, therefore, so many different types of journalists. We need neutral ones to expose the facts with simplicity and franchise, but we also need journalists expressing their feelings about the situation. If we were always reading the same thing, and I mean just the basic facts and statistics, that would be a bit boring, wouldn't it ?

In the end, I think that this is by reading different articles, by truly informing ourselves (that means by checking out different sources to make sure we're not being fooled), with neutral facts, positive opinions and then negative ones, that we can make up our mind and establish our own judgement. We need diversity in this world, otherwise life wouldn't be interesting.

So yeah, I just wanted to talk a bit about this aspect of medias and that is my personal opinion. I feel like this is an open subject to debates, that's what makes it super interesting ! What are your personal thoughts on the matter ?

Thanks for reading and I wish you all a happy Halloween ! 🎃