On the Vital Importance of (Good) Journalism
Democracy is about obtaining facts and deciding, while working with others and compromising, what the better public course might be. These democratic virtues have recently become confused with a lack of integrity, which has then been projected most glaringly onto independent journalists.
I am not naïve. Like any other craft or profession, journalism has its share of fakers—more now thanks to technological immediacy—of pseudo-journalists who cheat, sensationalize, and boldly declare their own agendas; who build—and are encouraged to build—themselves into a “brand,” to obtain a “following,” and to garner for his or her website more and more “likes” or “hits.”