onsdag 20. juli 2011

Murdoch-gate – the plot thickens!

A journalist is found dead at his home in London. Not long ago he used to work at the News of the World. One instantly assumes this might be suicide. If he just hadn't worked at the News of The World. Something is no longer rotten in Denmark. Something is rotten in UK. What is actually going on here?

There is an ongoing shift from hard news to soft news. When the previous Editor in Chief Brooks explains the production process in the news paper she once used to run as Editor in Chief, one absolutely does not believe her. I do not believe that she and other editors were not involved in the sewage drain system. Of course they were. Anyone with the slightest idea of how a news organization works, knows this very well: that journalists are cells of an organizational body, and if there's a risk of getting dragged into the non-paid blame belonging to an editor, they will inform their bosses thoroughly of any complications. Although most journalists of any news room is, in my opinion, far too loyal to the system, they will find ways to protect themselves from having to share the organizational responsibility the editors are paid to take.

So what is actually the problem? The problem is this: the journalist is the hand, the editor is the head. It is more likely the hand gets dirty than the head. Something the editor knows. If the editor doesn't want to work in a sewage system, he (in most cases) will call a plumber. If the system is the sewage, the editor needs to take on his (or in this single case: hers) shoulders. Politicians and their rules and laws opened the door for the Murdochian-media business a long time ago, business many honourable journalists have found jobs. But when someone,just like the small child in H.C. Andersens story about the naked king screams: The king is naked, the king is naked, neither the politicians will accept that they actually laid down the ground for tabloidizm of the sewage. Instead they turn towards what they call “the monster with no face”, and blame the monster called “Journalism”. Strangely the same ”monster” they so often have had to face when doing the slightest error with their elected power.

My point is that in the collaboration of power, the journalists might carry some blame, but of course not all of it, since the system itself needs to stand trial at Old Bailey. The journalists participate in the system. But if Murdochs and Brooks are allowed to run wild in at the same old exclusive power clubs of the British elite establishment, it will happen again. The monster without a face, Journalism, might be a monster, but more often than in this case, it is a more honourable than being credited for.

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