Journalism

 Subject: Journalism





I'm getting tired of reading and hearing stories of all the bad apples in the barrel and rarely given a picture of normal behaviour which is after all the norm. Journalism seems intent on sensationalising everything, determined to eke out a salacious story. There are few of us who have a totally clean slate there is always that one occasion when we behaved poorly but most of us are thankfully not under the spotlight and so our past remains where it belongs, in the past. But these days journalists seem proficient in digging the dirt searching for weakness and rarely highlighting a persons strengths.

Be it the policeman on the beat or the midwife in the hospital, our mental persuasion about them is modified by a horror story or simply the fact they are human after all. “He who throws the first stone”, in other words you have to be faultless to pass judgement was the  cautionary advice given but today the the dirt on someone which used to only came to light in the salacious stories in the News of the World. You had to subscribe to read about the lodger and the lass with loose morals or the archdeacon and the choir boy. Today, if the general papers are anything to go by everyone has an active shady side to their personality, all professions and all activities carry with them a share of disreputable conduct.

But is it a fair way to judge or should we use some proportionality when we read the stories of, for instance misogyny  or racism in the police, thousands of men are judged for the wrong doings of a few. Are the streets alive with muggers, do women continually suffer abuse, is it a jungle out there or are we simply led to believe so by the editors insistence of extremes in the stories he receives and decides to print.

We are in danger of using excessive hyperbole just for the sake of spicing a story up on the assumption that that’s what the readers want but this need to embellish a perfectly interesting story has, in my opinion got out of hand. People are looking for stability not sensationalism, normality not excessive behaviour, to read about success in our pressured lives, not failure. The obsession with trawling or trolling a celebrities life or a politician who had gone off the rails used to be the for the readership of the tabloid or the papers who specialised in such stories but look at any front page and it’s salacious nonsense which meets the eye. Even the serious stories such as the state of our economy are treated as if they are world ending events when in reality, with some sensible adjustments, for most of us , it’s simply a call up time to reappraise what’s important.