Thought-Provoker: the dire need for Public Interest Journalism

Public Interest Journalism is what is required, not the current tabloid journalistic focus on presenting partisan propaganda and disinformation, speculation in the absence or withholding of facts, focus on death, casualty and record breaking counts, sensationalizing banal and voyeuristic trash, celebrities and lifestyle topics, and content that is little more than poorly veiled advertising. The language is full of unnecessary and gratuitous adjectives, superlatives and catchwords (e.g., gone viral, wardrobe malfunction, the elite, best-of-the best, lock-down, stormed, fireball, super-storm).

This modern tabloid journalism and sensationalist drivel has dissolved any credibility that might have tenuously clung to the term ‘Journalism’. The few ethical journalists and their organizations still in existence are forever tainted by this rubbish and the organizational practices that foster and disseminate it.

Public Interest Journalism is investigative journalism. It involves delving into government, public and private sector processes and operations in order to expose surreptitious policy formation, exploitation and abuses of power, corruption, fraud and creative accounting practices, unsatisfactory and inequitable operating practices and the like. This is important for democracy and the common good. In other words, Public Interest Journalism is essential in order to even begin keeping government and private enterprise open and honest, and to mitigate the wrongs already perpetrated.

This is what journalism should be, and the few who fight for the retention of Public Interest Journalism in a society where government and business are oppressively controlling, elitist and fiercely protective of their own practices, self-serving and entitled, should be applauded for their efforts.