“Monstering is, ultimately, about giving a shit. It’s about giving something back to these bastards, these people whom we somehow let run our goddamn lives for us. Giving them a taste of what it means to be us. Every law that curbs my basic freedoms; every lie about the things I care for; every crime committed against me by their politics—that’s what make me get up and hound these fuckers, and I’ll do that until the day I die, or until my brain dries up or something. That’s what we achieve. We show them they’re accountable. We show them that just as they try to herd us back into cages of quiet mediocrity, we can chase them back to fucking hell with the truth.
It’s the journalism of attachment. It’s caring about the world you report on. Some people say that’s bad journalism, that there should be a detached, cold, unbiased view of the world in our news media. And if that’s what you want, there are security cameras everywhere that you could watch tapes of. I want to see humans talking about human life, personally. I want to see people who give a shit about the world.”
Spider Jerusalem
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3 comments:
That was really good and powerful.
cages of quiet mediocrity...
I work in the newspaper business. What he describes is not journalism, it is advocacy. That is exactly what NGO's do. I'm sorry, it's not exciting, it is dry, but journalism must be detached, fair and unbiased or it is not journalism.
If all journalism were like this (and much of it is becoming this way) then we are all on a slippery slope away from truth, accuracy, and rational thought towards a shrill, partisan propaganda whose agendas will be murky at best.
For journalism to be effective it come from no angle other than a dispassionate impartiality. It's not sexy, you can't turn it into a movie starring Brad Pitt, but that is the way it needs to be.
Thanks for that MD. It's good to see both sides of the arguement because what often 'passes' for journalism these days is not dispassionate or impartial. We see too little of the kind of reporting you speak of or the people brave enough to follow it.
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