Well, to be conventionally, by term, as a good journalist, you should posses the true spirit of journalism by applying all sorts of professionalism and ethics in delivering news. Tell the stories, real facts, get real testimonials, be accurate and precise.
Nowadays, the term of journalism, had been revised by the new approaches towards telling stories that had facts and testimonials. They called it the era of “new journalism”. This kind of approach of telling stories was more to the emotion of the stories. Why? Because readers or audience wants their news according to their personal experience and perspective. Yes, they want it to be personal and attach to them.
Yes, news should have pathos, where it can tells laughs, cries, angers and any kind of feeling that make the audience feel that they are human being. Some might say, it is kind of single-minded where news should be facts, facts and facts. But the point is, there are lot citizen journalists out there. Millions of them were bloggers where they told news from a different perspective. But anyway, news is still news. Readers and audience were getting smarter, you can’t simply tell them what they should read or watch. News being personalized is really what they need. It is some sort of escapism to relate themselves with the news and what is going on with the world.
Looking back at the past trend of journalism, I should say that, as a media or people telling news, we ourselves should be more upfront in raising issues. Propaganda journalism was unhealthy and we should practice less self-censorship.
What we lack is the investigative journalism. If we harp on nothing but propaganda, I am sure that the societies will only get inaccurate feedback.
I have this thought, when have I censored myself in the past and the question is why? Yes, I am a writer, although I have never really done a circuit of reporting, I have myself without fail have this kind of passion that I can’t live without provoking thoughts, broadening perspectives and even keyboard for me to hit the every single journal of my life. In that time, I couldn’t find myself censored or been censored by assorted editors, sub-editors, bulletin producers and even publishers. Nothing too big or overly-uttered, just the peculiar sensitive words and sentences here and there. Nothing had threatened me; nobody had knocking on my door at late of night asking for me to go to police station for an interrogation, nobody hacked my blog but there’s this comments on my blog that makes me kind of sigh….. (I don’t know why this people can’t accept different perspectives..). But yet, yes, I confess: I censored myself.
Why do I need to censor myself? I don’t know, I just don’t want to hurt people’s heart and even hurting myself with ignorant comments from people who didn’t do a lot of thinking and reflecting the issues towards themselves. I know that, we have been living in this world where we are no longer belong to any personal privacy, where every single thing about ourselves can easily be access on just finger tip away. Thanks to technology that bringing down every continent. We are just citizen of the world that happened to have all sorts of information on each other. Yes, we have becoming close to each other without knowing the fact that we have not met.
But I want to ask you, why? And until what stance, that we have the rights to the freedom of information? Is there really so-called freedom of press? Do we have to tell the truth every time; though we might know the truth will make us hurt and the hullabaloo effects that make the world gone mad? We are dealing with freedom right now. Freedom to tell the stories, freedom to know the stories. There are countries where journalists risk not just their freedom but their lives everyday to tell stories to the public. But a lot of journalists not really belong on that class.
It is simply that we have become chicken, afraid of our own reflections. Why? It is because this kind of conflict of interests. The fear of losing our rice-pot, promotion prospects, and the publications/media/TV station’s advertising revenue or political or social patronage is enough to shut most of us up. I have censored myself on many circumstances for almost the same reasons. I should yell to myself and it is kind of humiliated to admit it. But, yes, if I just an ordinary writer that happened to write on my own escapism- blog, I shouldn’t tell myself that I need to commit suicide, because I have 100% obligations for not to tell the stories. I should and I pity for those who are really a journalist but failed to do so the social obligations on being accurate and precise.
But then, in a real world, where if I slap myself and it is hurt…. Press freedom is a myth. We have commit homicide on our freedom by using our own hands. The press, government and corporate governance have become freak bed-companion, where we do back-benching each others on many kind of interests. Yes, this is what we called democratic; if we want to be counted in, we should sleep with our enemies. This way, we will get whatever we desired without having to stain our hands out of it. Lost in translation where we suffers from our action, we have allowed ourselves to be co-opted into the system in a process not as totalitarian as we want to have faith on it to be.
Anyway, this is the rules that we have stated earlier, we can’t simply break the rules and I say we should play by the rules. If you can’t really help yourself for being self-censored, I think we better keep away of telling the stories. I have to deal with a lot of difficult task of making myself reliable and transparent; my kind of single-minded are more sincere. And I should tell and always remind myself I am responsible on whatever that I would like to address. While until that circumstances, I should focus myself on cari makan that helps me kept paying the bills without fail every month.
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