Many modern Americans think that the duty of a modern journalist is to make sure that Donald Trump doesn’t win the upcoming election. Hamish McKenzie has a different idea that has nothing to do with picking sides in an election. Here’s an excerpt:
Journalism is done in the public interest. It’s about finding and sharing the truth, as best it can be determined, and it is essential to a functioning democracy. A journalist’s job can be difficult, especially when it comes to reporting on public figures and those who aspire to high office. Such figures are willing to go to great lengths to hide unfavorable information, and their communications with the public are typically obscured by layers of spin, deflection, misdirection, and sometimes outright lies. These tactics are nonpartisan and have been deployed by candidates of all parties in all countries for time immemorial.
Occasionally, though, some light gets through the cracks. Sometimes the journalist gets the story—and then so does the public.
The truth can arrive in many guises: an informant, a whistleblower, a leaked document, even stolen materials. In all cases, parties that don’t want that information to come to light will aggressively move to prevent its distribution. Often they will sow fear and doubt and resort to smearing the reporter. But in many cases, it’s this kind of reporting that is the most indispensable. Think of the New York Times and Washington Post’s coverage of the Pentagon Papers, based on stolen documents, that revealed that the U.S. government had secretly expanded its war in Vietnam; or the Abu Ghraib scandal, in which Seymour Hersh and CBS revealed the U.S. military’s torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq; or Glenn Greenwald’s coverage for The Guardian exposing the widespread tapping of ordinary Americans’ phones, revealed by the documents leaked by Edward Snowden. It’s in these moments that journalism fulfills its highest calling: holding power to account.
It is the journalist’s burden to resist the pressures of antagonists in pursuit of the truth. At its best, this kind of journalism is a service to us all. Its practitioners need and deserve all the protections that their right to freedom of the press and freedom of expression can offer.
