People know longer trust what they hear or read

No longer trusting what they read, see and hear, people in western democracies are questioning as never before, particularly via the internet

Says John Pilger writing in this weeks addition of the New Staesman.


And Pilger doesn't mince his words

For as long as I can remember, the relationship of journalists with power has been hidden behind a bogus objectivity and notions of an "apathetic public" that justify a mantra of "giving the public what they want"

And he continues

No longer trusting what they read and see and hear, people in western democracies are questioning as never before, particularly via the internet. Why, they ask, is the great majority of news sourced to authority and its vested interests? Why are many journalists the agents of power, not people?

Of course it begs the question of what a journalists role is in the liberal democracy and I can't help but hark back to the comments of Nick Davies that I reported on this blog a couple of weeks ago concerning the churnalist

http://thoughtsofnigel.blogspot.com/2007/11/day-of-churnalist-and-belly-dancer.html