4 ms·

> members of professional organisation and they have code of conduct Laws exist, so there are no crimes? > Thanks to investigative journalists, you have thing

• tapland 5y ago
  Just a week or so ago in Sweden public service hadn't published any articles on the government having lied about the existence of meeting protocols and memos from covid meetings. It was out of the ordinary seeing them report only after that decision itself became a topic. Not publishing is a very powerful tool, and no journalist is forced by the code of conduct to publish what their employer doesn't want.
• meheleventyone 5y ago
  > Laws exist, so there are no crimes? More if you don’t trust journalists to be honest when they at least try to establish norms of behaviour you should trust some random person even less. Both are amenable to corruption.
  • jcbrand 5y ago
    The choice is not between journalist and "some random person". There are many non-journalists, experts in their fields and who have a long history of credibility who publish information that one can read.
    • meheleventyone 5y ago
      I was using the comparison to random people and influencers mentioned by zriha that spawned this thread of conversation. There are of course credible experts. However I’d argue many/most popular alternative sources chosen over journalism are not credible experts.
  • nosianu 5y ago
    > some random person A journalist is some random person too. Only a handful of people know the person to any degree. You are asking to trust some brand. A brand that is controlled by few rich centralized media owners (in the "free" countries, government, directly or indirectly, in others). The main incentive of a journalist is the same as for any other employee. To Keep ones employment and to make money. The idealism, if it ever exists, diminishes over time as experience grows and the need for stable income too (family).
    • meheleventyone 5y ago
      > A journalist is some random person too. The rest of my post you didn’t quote included the specific difference I was talking about that I note you don’t address.
• chalst 5y ago
  > Do remember that the Panama Papers whistleblower got mysteriously car-bombed. Remember? As far as I am aware the whistleblower is still anonymous. Where did you get your information? People who believe the elite control the media seem to often be very credulous towards claims that don't come from elites.
  • jcbrand 5y ago
    Is the Guardian elite enough for you? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb-kills-panama-papers-journalist https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/16/malta-car-bomb... Not the whistleblower, but the journalist who investigated it. Now, before you say this is proof that journalists are impartial and not beholden to elites... this is proof that journalists who act against the interests of the powerful and wealthy get terminated. Other "journalists" see this and take note. That's the stick. Then there are also the carrots.
    • chalst 5y ago
      Daphne Caruana Galizia was not the Panama Papers whistleblower. She was a whistleblower who used the revelations of the Panama Papers to join up the dots in her own enquiries into corruption in Malta. It's worth noting her killers got caught and the senior figures in the government who she accused of creating "a culture of impunity" were removed from power. There's a lot of things I don't like about elitist journalism, but there's a whole class of investigative journalism that got done better in the old model than today. Cf. Evgeny Morozov.
• kavalg 5y ago
  This is scary.