Adrian Northrup

Journalists. Now there’s a group of people that evoke a myriad of reactions. They’re too pushy and sensationalistic. No, no, they’re too passive. They can’t be trusted. They’re too liberal. They work in an industry controlled by profit margins.

Whatever your view of journalists, there is a pretty good chance that it’s not quite what it should be, and who can blame you? Politicians simultaneously demonize and exploit them, the entertainment media portrays them as arrogant and insensitive and there was that time when your friend’s name was spelled wrong.

Journalists work in an industry where the fruits of their labor are, by definition, open to public scrutiny. And that is, I should say, the way it needs to be. Our role is to provide the public with the information it needs to operate in an open and free society. That can include scrutinizing various aspects of that society, so it’s fitting that we receive scrutiny as well.

But there’s a problem. So many times, that scrutiny unjustifiably condemns journalists, sometimes because it’s advantageous to have a scapegoat that will literally publish criticism of itself, and sometimes because people just don’t understand or respect how journalism works.

I’m by no means an industry apologist. There are real problems in the way today’s news media operates. But there are also aspects of it – from motivations to methods – that so many people forget or don’t know to appreciate as they assess its effectiveness and relevance to their lives.

Here in the United States, and especially in the middle-class society that most of us hail from, it’s easy to feel insulated from the world’s problems. We have little understanding of what it’s like to live in an oppressive society where information is power and it rests firmly in the hands of the few. Even beyond that, many Americans live a lifestyle in which they could never read a newspaper or watch a newscast in their life and continue on relatively unfazed, save for a bit of ignorance.

But there’s a problem with that logic. Each of us has issues and concerns that we care about or at least would care about if we lived a slightly less comfortable existence, which is always possible in one way or another.

It’s the news media’s job to explore the business of a society so that each of its citizens, if they so choose, have the power to shape it. Without that choice, society as we know it would regress into a much darker time.

And yet so many people seem to doubt the motives of journalists.

According to a 2005 Harris Poll, journalism is one of the least-revered jobs nationwide, along with accountants and stockbrokers. But it’s more than numbers. My fellow journalists and I encounter, on a fairly regular basis, people who assume the worst about us and our profession.

The great irony here is that, unlike so many other industries, journalism is a craft rooted, in its purest intended sense, to societal altruism.

Yes, our nation’s largest news outlets seem driven by money, and even smaller outlets can compromise their journalistic effectiveness for financial reasons.

And yes, there are journalists whose primary motivations seem to be to create controversy and propel their careers forward.
But the large majority of journalists – the actual people on the ground pursuing information – that I have encountered, and in turn come to respect, have only one motivation that really directs what they do: the desire to provide people with the information they deserve and need to know.

In terms of method, the press is by no means infallible. Mistakes are evident everyday – from grammatical errors to grand oversights.
But the problem is so many people don’t recognize the legal, ethical and simple logistical challenges journalists face on a daily basis.

Here at The Spectator and at any other paper I’ve ever worked for, journalists do their best to provide accurate information, colored with an array of fairly represented viewpoints.

It’s often a scramble to get the information we want, and sometimes that information just isn’t available, rendering us somewhat helpless.

Other times our work leaves sources feeling misrepresented. To be fair, journalists can make mistakes in interpreting what people are saying. But we often garner criticism from people who believe we are trying to manipulate or unfairly frame what they’ve said. They simply don’t understand our obligation to present all relevant information, or the time and space constraints that challenge our abilities everyday.

So take your pick from the series of criticisms constantly lobbed at the press. I can’t guarantee you that none of those labels ever fit. But I can guarantee you that we do our best to defy them every single day and that you, as the readers, are the only ones that can truly free us from them.