2023-08-24 07:05:00
I think that journalism is the best profession in the world, and also the most dangerous. The reason is that genuine journalism cultivates the truth, investigates the facts with freedom and intellectual honesty, and assumes correlative responsibilities. This is how the world’s codes of journalistic ethics express themselves.
Ergo, professional journalism is closer to the exercise of human rights than to the opinions of ideologies, although the dividing line is indelible, and sometimes blurs because the supreme value of politics is the common good and the defense of life. .
Journalism and ethics are empathetic. Human values are present in the news, reports, interviews, opinions and chronicles because they inform, educate, entertain, and contribute to the strengthening of democracy. There is no aseptic journalism. The responsible use of freedom responsibly, with no other path than human dignity is the paradigm of modern journalism.
However, the issue of objectivity in journalism is recurring. There are scientific methods that serve to contrast documents, testimonies and evidence. And here a turning point: the journalist is not a judge, but a messenger. The communication professional investigates reality, prepares messages, writes based on audiences and disseminates them through print, audiovisual or digital media. But when investigative journalism turns to coverage and monitoring of politics, he could become a political actor.
This conflict is of an epistemological, deontological and methodological nature, because political communication is sustained in complex scenarios, attributed to subjects, facts and polysemic cultural environments. For this reason, living in those spaces where power is visible -saturated with interactions and interests- is difficult and risky, and where impartiality could dissolve.
The relations between power and the media are relevant in the era of digital communication, as social networks have fractured traditional media systems with other -anonymous- political actors who influence audiences. In these conditions, how to achieve a serious political communication that avoids manipulation and polarization, and reinforces the rule of law to improve the quality of democracy?
#journalism #politics