Journalism and Professional Journalists

Throughout its history, the press has had a voluble relation of ripples and spacings with the powers political and economic. To a certain extent, the media has been dependent to the dynamic of the political power because it has been part of the same one, in spite of its possible attempts to stay to the margin of him.

If in century XVIII, the press centered its eagerness in merely informative contents, and for century XIX it oriented his profile towards political causes and ideological disputes of opinion, as of century XX it began to handle itself as a spectacular showcase for the entertainment and the impulse of the businesses, vein that today is operated to the maximum.

In other words: in the last two centuries, the media has structured its operation in winch of the policy and the capital.

It is under this argument that authors as Edmundo Lambeth and Raul Sohr declare their skepticism and incredulity on unconditional kindness of the press and his jeopardize search of the truth. The independence of the average news, agrees, is reverendo a myth. Rather, this one tends to draw itself like alibi to conceal the slants or interested parcialidades.

The media is seen then exposed the pressures, agreements and obstacles of three types of actors: the own owners of massive means, by extrajournalistic interests, generally of economic character; the advertisers whose present power is determining for the mediatic sobreexperience; and the government by means of the discretionary application of the law or through the advertising subsidy, that more and more is reduced to its minimum expression.

The search of veracity, the business and the policy are intermingled in the today media. And when that happens without ethical miramientos, regularly one is amputated first: it is disinformed. The disinformation is an inherent phenomenon to the fight by the power. It is disinformed to mold to the public opinion and to extend therefore the borders of the political dominion. It is to say: the disinformation is the deliberate exercise of the lie: it is deceived to maintain the power, to arrive at him or to want more. The previous thing much it is come off that the truth never has taken with the policy nor, the less, with the businesses.

When some journalists try to inhibit or to exile the misleading spirits (the agreement or the acceptance to hide, to manipulate or to falsear data) and the powers they get exasperated, the ghost appears then of the censorship (is to say: the imposition to hide on the part of the power), that in the end channels the sad autocensura (the own imposition to hide).

By press censorship it has to be understood to the intervention of the representatives of the political or economic power in the activity of massive means or their professionals, with the purpose of preventing the information dissemination or commentaries opposed to his annoying interests or to his sensitivities. In his more level form it is the act to make shut up to the journalist or means (via its directors) by interest or coaction. The freedom of the word usually mutilates when abuses undress, inepcias, illicit actions, of great power or abuse or frank ignorance. In sum: when the defects or tumoraciones of the political and/or economic task are revealed.

But most serious it is not the censorship but the autocensura. This last one is the censorship that even exerts the journalist in its own materials before presenting them, conditional or bordered by the policy of the company, pressures or particular interests. It can even affirm that the censorship is the regulating forjadora and of the autocensura of means as a whole and of the professionals of the information.

Why we say that the autocensura seems to be the predominant phenomenon? Raymundo Riva Palace responds with success:
In Mexico the censorship of press like institutionalized instrument does not exist. There are no censors in the means that are reviewing everything what it is written, nor they must consult to the government the delicate information before being able to spread them. Nevertheless, a reader does not find in which read, he listens and he sees, the precise registry of the events.

The interest conflicts (dilemmas between disclosing impartial information and information incomplete or slanted by the direct or indirect own benefit) usually are the motors of the autocensura, manifestos generally in the advertising income and the gifts given by the powers to means and journalists. Such phenomena, without a doubt some, despises and affects the liberties of expression and information of which the citizenship had to be beneficiary.

Outlined here minimumly the infections that drag facts like the disinformation, the censorship and the autocensura, it is worth the trouble to ask itself if such panorama not desestimula the ethical and professional eagerness of the journalist.

In Mexico the voices are few that have pronounced on the matter, surely because do not occupy greater attention nor worry much to the subjects relative to the necessary profesionalización or the sense and ethics about the task periodistíco.

Between such voices, Federico Campbell has commented who, after years of an informative routine, the journalist experiences a luck of professional melancholy that makes him feel oppression and dissatisfaction: “he has the sensation of which his news articles, through brave that are and through documented that is, do not happen to be rays in the water”. In spite of his insistence and will, they do not obtain an exit, and when yes they reach diffusion its impact is almost null.

Additionally it has been disappearing the romantic vision of the media it jeopardize due, among other reasons, to the masificador height of the informative oligopolios that multiply their tentacles and all they absorb it and they control it.

Even at the cost of frights and desencantos, Manuel Buendía thought that the journalists do not plow in the sea: “something is” and the informer has to feel gratificado if one between million reacts to the spread thing. There is no effort that is lost totally.

The North American investigator John Merril perceives a species of pesimism and conformismo by the decline of the journalistic freedom before the uniformador control of the mediatic conglomerates, before the suffocating influence of the economic power by means of the publicity, and before monotonía of a press incapable to run risks.

In the middle of those circumstances, Merril appeals to the personal fight to gain authenticity, freedom and autonomy to overcome the conformismo, the despersonalización and the pressures:
It is a will subject. A subject is of which the journalist wishes to be he himself, or better still: it must be created authentically and constantly to itself.

Certainly only one firm vocation, a clear conscience and an iron will can mean a shield and a lance against the darts of the pesimism, the indifference and the conformismo. That is: an ethical armor can solely in front of do the emptinesses, vices and virus that gets to suffer the media as opposed to the attacks of the power.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.