It was July 13th, 1793. Nightfall had come and French journalist Jean-Paul Marat was taking a bath in his Paris flat. The French Revolution raged on. Then there was a knock at the door. Marat got out of the bath tub, covered up, and went to answer the door. He opened it to see the face of a young woman who claimed to have critical information regarding the political adversaries of the Jacobins, the Girondins. Marat invited the woman in, resumed his bath, placed a board over the bath tub to serve as a desk and interviewed the young woman who was sitting at the side of the bath tub. Then, all of a sudden, the young woman exposed a kitchen knife and stabbed Marat in the chest. Within seconds the radical journalist was dead.
In today’s day and age, a question has become clear: does journalism and do journalists still matter? In a day where a tweet can land a high school English teacher on the news talking about fighter jets, many people would say that the days of investigative journalists with the “press pass in fedora and notebook in hand” are long dead. I beg to differ.
Journalism started as a noble but radical profession. It was to inform the general public of events that were occurring outside of their small towns and villages. In his 1841 book, Heroes and Hero Worship, Thomas Carlyle stated “[Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Forth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact.” He continues saying “[a journalist] speaking now to the whole nation becomes a power, a branch of government with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. The requisite thing is that he have a tongue to which others will listen; this & nothing more is requisite.”
That tongue that Carlyle talks about is crucial to why journalism is important. Journalists did not have to cover-up or persuade readers; all that they had to do was inform them. Throughout history, many journalists went unnoticed or killed for what they said about rulers and governments. They dug deep to uncover the truth and some had to pay the ultimate price for it. While many ran away from the dangers of certain events, it is, or at least was, the job of the journalist to run into it and come out with a story.
Technology today has made it possible for anyone to share information at the push of a button. According to a recent study conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 20% of the respondents said that they received their news from social media when they look for news online. All it takes is to be in the right place, at the right moment, at the right time and anyone can inform the general public about an event faster than a news van can be dispatched. While these “Twitteralists” serve a good job at breaking ongoing events, it is impossible to cramp the necessary information in one-hundred and forty characters.
Furthermore, the general public does not have the resources or responsibility to cover a story entirely. They do not have the sources to ask questions to, nor do they have an understanding of the procedure of questions or the stage to present the story to besides their friends or followers on social media.
It is the job of journalists to dig a little deeper and try a little harder to get information to let the general population know what is going on. This takes time and effort. Most people on social media are not journalists and cannot devote their lives to tracking down stories. As a result, if people were to rely only on the news they received from social media, it would be too vague and general that it would not supply the people with a sufficient amount of investigation and evidence.
As time continues to progress, while many may look to social media to view the up-to-date current events, I believe that the journalism profession will never go out of business. Every generation needs to have its Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward or John Peter Zenger. Every generation needs to have its journalists and reporters that they can rely on for true and deep stories that expose everything: good or bad.
So it looks like journalists and journalism in general is here to stay. The Fourth Estate that Carlyle so dearly admired will continue to inform the public of politicians’ wrong doings and the weird news items that we all have to hear about. Journalism is not a dying art; it is going through a time of transition. However, this transition will never take away the concept of hunting down the truth. It simply encourages the general public to do it as well. That was the philosophy for the renaissance of the Forth Estate, and that is what will keep it amenable.
The English poet Matthew Arnold said that journalism “is literature in a hurry.” There will always be journalists pushing out stories to share with the general public, not necessarily for hopes of personal fame or glory but for the satisfaction to let the truth be told. Therefore, yes, journalism still does matter.
