qed’s blog

Megan Carberry recently wrote about the future for journalism graduates, she seems contemptuous of any doom and gloom scenarios advancing the line that “there will always be a great career for people who can gather accurate facts and present them fairly”.

Such assertions are of course easily made, I can just as easily say there will always be enough food for everyone. Of course by making such a prediction I can only be proven wrong by future events which means that today, here and now my claim is at least possibly true. Equally, by making such claims I am able to avoid discussions about what is happening here and now because I am not only making a future claim, but also because my claim incorporates the generalisation of “always”.

What I find particularly fascinating about this line of argument is that a, it is immediately focussed on the careers of “hopeful, idealistic student journalists” and at the same time quite dismissive of established journalist. She asserts that the imperative for any aspiring journalist is to “spend their energy figuring out how to make money (i.e. pay for the creation of) for the content news organizations are providing now”.

Now it’s not that difficult to understand what this all means for Megan. Learn how to gather facts and write a good story, then figure out how to package up your content so that you become not just a writer but also a bonus to the balance sheet. I guess once a few of those idealistic journalism graduates realise that making it sell is more important that anything else, then they will have to deal with their own idealism. One ideal they hopefully have avoided subscribing to is the notion of a free press or the so-called 4th estate.(1)

There is a rather deeper question that needs to be asked of Ms Carberry’s article. As long as it is a matter of careers, then sure a little heads up on the financial realities is probably ok. However if a young person has some sense of social responsibility they may well ask if a “career” working in a self serving politically motivated industry is really what journalism is about. Perhaps we would be better served if the masquerade of journalism and press freedom was described more for what it is rather than what it would like everyone to believe.

Ref (1): What Fourth Estate? By Mia Jarlov

This somewhat old cartoon from here