Let me speak for journalists everywhere: “You got us, we’re scum.”
You may wonder, after a hard day harassing the bereaved, hacking phones and making stuff up, how we sleep at night. Well we do it by indulging in the behaviours we publicly condemn in others before passing out in an alcoholic, pilled-up, post-illicit-coitus haze.
I have written often about how journalism is dying. Now, looking at the News of the Worms and the Milly Dowler case, I wonder if that’s such a bad thing.
Oxygen of democracy, my dimpled, Deuchars-padded arse. There might be the odd good apple but, in the words of Abbot Arnaud Amalric: “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius,” or: “Kill ‘em all, let God sort them out.”
Newspapers bend the truth to suit their (owner’s) agendas - in much the same way that a hurled rock bends a crystal decanter. Broadcasters indulge in the bland anti-journalism of “Party X says A and Party Y says B. One thing is certain, only time will tell.”
No wonder the man in the street trusts journalists less than politicians and estate agents. Traditional media reflect only a very narrow slice of the spectrum of opinion: look at the number of Scots who favour independence, then look at the number of papers that take that stance.
Or take a look at coverage of the financial crisis. From the popular prints, one would assume that it was all caused by profligate public sector types and that the only cure is pain for the little people. No mention, oddly, of the role played by open-ended expensive foreign adventures (which are great for copy) in bankrupting us. Nor of the obvious flaws in late-model stockmarket capitalism. And, of course, little mention is made of how we could repair matters by properly taxing rich people and institutions. Of course, only a fool and a Communist would draw a link between that last point and the fact that newspapers tend to be owned by rich people and institutions.
Do you think that everyone who works on a red top is a monster? I’ve worked (mercifully briefly) for the Sunday People, for crying out loud, which on a good day aspires to be the News of the World. I don't believe in purgatory but the things I did for red tops will extend any time I spend there - though I hope that my spell at the Sunday Mail in Glasgow counts as time served. It wasn’t staffed by concentration camp guards but rather decent enough folks forcing themselves to do nasty things to pay the rent. (In many ways, I prefer “tabloid” to “broadsheet” hacks as they tend to be less up themselves.)
So let us not shed a tear as we wave tatty-bye to machine journalism that warps the craft and those who practise it. For too long journalism has been twisted to fit scatter-gun advertising and circulation models. For too long it has been reliant on being fed titbits by politicians, celebrities’ agents and PR firms. And God bless the disruptive power of the internet that gives the public a different path to stories.
Except...
Except we’ve not got there yet. There are precious few alternative, authoritative, independent news sources out there for those of us tired of the same old, same old. NewsnetScotland is good at what it does but what it does is unashamedly biased. The newly launched Huffington Post UK seems to relegate Scotland to the “funnies”. Where can you go for an unspun, serious, in-depth picture of what’s happening in Scotland?
Indeed, even this augustish organ consists far more of good intentions than actual breaking news.
We will very shortly be unveiling a donations drive to “crowdfund” major improvements to our output, including must-read, in-depth coverage of the major news issues of the day using the full power of the digital medium. We can’t do that now because we don’t have the resources but we shall be looking to our readers for our funding because we want to answer to them rather than institutions, banks and rich people.
What do we offer in return for donations? We hope that our actions so far give an answer to that: a journalism worthy of survival.
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