In a November 2018 interview with Kara Swisher, technology business journalist and co-founder of Recode, Maria Ressa admitted: “I think we’ve been forced to be activists now.” This is exactly the problem with journalism today which I laid out in my recent article, “What does Maria Ressa’s participation in New York City’s #NYE2018 festivities mean?”
Ressa and her cronies have fatally-tainted the profession of journalism by engaging in this insidious campaign to raise their profile as “activists” fighting for “press freedom”. They are no longer acting as journalists and, instead, putting forth more of an activist brand.
Indeed, the trouble with “journalism” today is that its practitioners (or the sorts Ressa seem to want to mold the profession around) no longer objectively report the news as disinterested agents. Rather, they aspire to be part of the news if not the centre of the report itself. It seems Ressa would even encourage her reporters to take selfies of themselves making the news.
That’s just plain dishonest journalism. In fact that’s not journalism at all. That’s plain ol’ social media famewhoring. It would seem like Maria Ressa would like this “new breed” of “journalists” to act like the increasingly ubiquitous Snapchatting teenager!
Somebody from the remaining ranks of ethical journalists should stop Maria Ressa before she causes even more damaged to an already embattled profession.
[Credit to Twitter user @singulariDEE for tweeting the Decode article.]
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