Are all journalists ruthless?

Lollipop95

I ask because when I was in secondary school we had a woman who was subbing for my english teacher. She would frequently teach us when our normal teacher wasn't available. She once told the class that she used to want to me a journalist but she then realised that you have to posess a certain type of personality - you have to be ruthless She then said she realised she didn't have the personality to be a journalist and knew that she wouldn't be able to back it, so she chose a different profession.

I'm just wondering if this is true? I can imagine it is certainly true for tabloids but broadsheets I would have thought wouldn't produce gutter press. Any views on this?

Sheep Lover

She means you can copy and paste from Twitter is all.

KomradeBishop

A large number of journalists in Ireland are cowards really, who wouldn't do any meaningful investigative journalism because of the personal/career risks.

Journalism as a profession, is mostly managed/captured, and not really fulfilling its proper role these days.

Presume it depends on the journo.

Those door stopping the relations of murder victims for the worst of the tabloids are probably thick necked, the sports reporter in your standard county newspaper might not need to be.

Cold War Kid

Well not all obviously, but if you just mean news reporters/investigative journalists, then yes, you do have to be pretty tough. Ruthless is quite a harsh term - makes a person seem horrible. You don't necessarily have to be horrible, but you do have to have a fair bit of neck and a very thick skin.
It's probably worse for those working in the red-tops but it would be needed for any publication/broadcaster, because you have to ask hard questions and do a fair bit of detective work.

kneemos

The obituary columnist is probably a nice enough chap.

Mr. Incognito

Very very very few journalists in ireland.

Mostly its vacous nonsense that pours out of idiots heads or copied and pasted from actual journos.

Read the sindo for example. Puff opinion pieces with very little actual information.

Cold War Kid

The dirtiest of the dirtiest has to be resorted to now too, because of print being in so much trouble.
You can clearly see The Irish Times and Irish Examiner veering in the Spindo direction.

michael999999

Denis o Brien owns most of Ireland's journalists!

And what ones he doesn't own he's getting injunctions against!

poisonated

The ones I have come across have all being horrible people.

Calibos

Printed bloggers is what most of them are now.

DoYouEvenLift

Journalism is a joke nowadays with basically no integrity or balls, and not just in Ireland either. Seems like media everywhere had a meeting and decided to agree that they all turn to sh!t. We actually haven't got one consistently good paper in Ireland right now. This is partly why Waterford whispers news is so successful, their biggest joke is they actually do fit in amongst the clickbait titles our actual news outlets are using now.


You have to find blogs done essentially by nobody's to get good reading material but these aren't as instantly trustworthy as newspapers can be.

stimpson

It's not like the good old days of journalism.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wfZyB5I6j6Y/TMteNiHSpnI/AAAAAAAABeE/Nwq9TJE7OXs/s1600/1224281058402_1.jpg

KomradeBishop

To be honest, if we want a better country, this is probably the one area of change we can make, which will make the biggest difference: Soften the ridiculously restrictive libel laws, or get foreign news outlets to start taking a focused interest in Ireland, where they are out of reach of our easily exploitable laws - and get in proper whistleblower laws so that people can blow the whistle without risking it ruining their entire lives and making them unemployable.

If we can get enough quality investigative journalists muckraking in this country, safe from its repressive libel laws, and able to leave the country easily so they are relatively safe from personal repercussions, then we could get a lot done in exposing corruption both in politics/business here, and informing the public about it so something can be done - I mean just look at the likes of DOB and both how much media control he has, and how much direct political influence he has (even after likely corruption revelations from the Moriarty tribunal...) - we very sorely need more journalists with actual balls, investigating people like this and the politicians they are connected to.

Same with the financial/banking industry here - arguably there was rampant fraud in the runup to the crisis, and never a peek heard from anyone - some who did blow the whistle have had their careers ruined and were threatened by the central bank with being reported to the Gardai if they exposed it.

Most people are not aware of stuff like this - no surprise given the current quality of our media - but it's things like this, which accumulatively make you think, that we live in a fairly corrupt little country.

DEFTLEFTHAND

I suppose you have to have a bit of neck. I imagine certain areas of journalism like current affairs or investigative for eg wouldn't suit a person with a more reserved personality.

Arsemageddon

This fella was pretty ruthless.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlado_Taneski

YFlyer

Arsemageddon wrote: »

This fella was pretty ruthless.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlado_Taneski

A case of the reporter influencing the story.

mikemac1

You have to be fearless and visit halting sites and rough estates where the criminal kingpins live

Or you can be Paul Williams and print lies and claim to be a target by criminals who probably never heard of you. When your stories come from "sources" you can make up any ****e you like

dxhound2005

DoYouEvenLift wrote: »

Journalism is a joke nowadays with basically no integrity or balls, and not just in Ireland either. Seems like media everywhere had a meeting and decided to agree that they all turn to sh!t. We actually haven't got one consistently good paper in Ireland right now. This is partly why Waterford whispers news is so successful, their biggest joke is they actually do fit in amongst the clickbait titles our actual news outlets are using now.


You have to find blogs done essentially by nobody's to get good reading material but these aren't as instantly trustworthy as newspapers can be.

The only thing I "know" about the standard of journalism is what I read on these sorts of threads. Much of what I read is in the same vein as this post. But what I am reading may not be true.


In order to come to the conclusion that there is no consistently good paper you would have to read them all every day. Do you?

Give me an example of one of those blogs which you get good reading material from.

How do you measure the "success" of Waterford Whispers? What percentage of the general public would read it or even have heard of it?

dxhound2005

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

Very very very few journalists in ireland.

Mostly its vacous nonsense that pours out of idiots heads or copied and pasted from actual journos.

Read the sindo for example. Puff opinion pieces with very little actual information.

How many is that, one or two? You might as well give credit and name them.

I don't think a vacuous mind would have the invention to produce any journalism.

And opinion pieces by definition are not news reporting, and do not necessarily or even usually come for the pen of a journalist.

Cold War Kid

I used to dispute people who went on about journalism being shyte too - seemed like one of those things that just gets thrown out without any real substance - but I can see their point now.
It's the internet - causing laziness and also financial pressure on various outlets, resulting in a compromise in quality.

SEPT 23 1989

The Libel laws in this country have a lot to do with it and certain people owning all the media outlets

Mr. Incognito

dxhound2005 wrote: »

How many is that, one or two? You might as well give credit and name them.

I don't think a vacuous mind would have the invention to produce any journalism.

And opinion pieces by definition are not news reporting, and do not necessarily or even usually come for the pen of a journalist.

Tom Humphries.
Miriam Lord.
Gene Kerrigan in the 90s before he just started recycling the same five complaints.

No one else ever wanders beyond bland over tired cliches.

dxhound2005

Mr. Incognito wrote: »

Tom Humphries.
Miriam Lord.
Gene Kerrigan in the 90s before he just started recycling the same five complaints.

No one else ever wanders beyond bland over tired cliches.

I wasn't expecting you to include a sports journalist. But I'm pretty sure that Humphries no longer contributes to The Paper of Record. Not after his bit of trouble. But I could be wrong. Do you take The Irish Times every day?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056917503&page=2

Lollipop95

Cold War Kid wrote: »

The dirtiest of the dirtiest has to be resorted to now too, because of print being in so much trouble.
You can clearly see The Irish Times and Irish Examiner veering in the Spindo direction.

Really?! I thought those two would be seen as very respected papers!

Cold War Kid

Lollipop95 wrote: »

Really?! I thought those two would be seen as very respected papers!

Well they're resorting to the populist shyte that the Indo resorts to - like "Waaaaaah the public sector!"

ClovenHoof

Newspaper journalists scored near the top of the Professions with the Highest numbers of Psychopath according to Kevin Dutton of University College London.

Having known a few, I tend to agree. There is no decency in many of them.

dxhound2005

ClovenHoof wrote: »

Newspaper journalists scored near the top of the Professions with the Highest numbers of Psychopath according to Kevin Dutton of University College London.

Having known a few, I tend to agree. There is no decency in many of them.

If you call near the top being sixth out of ten.

It reminds me of the Pravda report of the two car race where the Soviet car was soundly beaten by the American car. "Russian car places second in race, American car second last"