This is an interesting piece about a Mexican drug news blog run by an anonymous student.
“For the scanty details that they (mass media) put on television, they get grenades thrown at them and their reporters kidnapped,” the blogger said. “We publish everything. Imagine what they could do to us.”
Of course, since he posts information he gets directly from drug cartels, he gets a tsk-tsk from a journalist:
“Media outlets have social responsibilities and have to serve the public,” said Carlos Lauria, of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. “This is being produced by someone who is not doing it from a journalistic perspective. He is doing it without any ethical considerations.”
I’m sure Lauria’s committee is a good bunch of people who do good work, but I think we can all do without the journalism lectures from self-appointed gatekeepers.
El Cid
Well, I’m sure that as long as the US gov’t focuses as increased military and police responses to the mult-billion dollar narcotics trade supplying the massive US market and which assassinates not only local opposition but police chiefs and military generals or easily corrupts many of the same, surely this strategy will eventually triumph.
You know, just like how the massive, gigantic military aid stopped Colombia from being the #1 world producer and trafficker of cocaine into being the #1 world producer and trafficker of cocaine.
gordo
“This is being produced by someone who is not doing it from a journalistic perspective. He is doing it without any ethical considerations.”
This is a valid criticism, and it’s got some actual truth to it. This blogger is basically acting according to the “stenographer” model that so many people (here) often criticize when used in regards to the he-said/she-said style of writing. This model serves at the behest of the information providers to obfuscate the difference between fact and lies. There is a need for journalists to act as a filter, and there is a need for them to critically evaluate the information they obtain and disseminate. However, those are subjective processes, and just because many American journalists’ subjective notions are fatally skewed due to their modern role as access whores doesn’t mean that the entire concept of “journalistic perspective” should be dismissed out of hand.
Gen. Jrod and his Howling Army
A true journalist would wait for permission from the corrupt police and governments before breaking stories they’d prefer stayed buried. Only irresponsible children would simply report the truth.
Ogami Itto
Says Mr. Lauria, from the safety of his office in New York City.