Abstract
From the British Journalism Review of 10 years ago (vol. 21, issue no 3, 2010)
‘…the need for exposure is as great as it ever was. Some would say greater. Our leaders lie to us, as the evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War is slowly revealing. It is the job of all who believe that the truth must out to do what they can to make it happen.’
– BJR editorial
‘Over the past 30 years, citizens have increasingly shown that they have less and less time for traditional news. We can blame the internet, the greedy financial institutions that now dominate newspaper boardrooms, or – worse still – “the youth of today”. But the reality is that it’s the golf courses, gymnasia, bar meals and the garden, all of which increasingly fill up readers’ time. They are simply too busy getting on with their affluent selfishness to bother about the world outside.’
– Jim Chisholm, independent media analyst and adviser
‘…there are cases in any reporter’s life when naming and quoting people caught up in the big stories of our time while innocent themselves of any wrongdoing serves no useful social or even journalistic purpose, while inflicting needless injury to the people concerned. In this, as in much else we do, anchoring ourselves in claims of a bloodless neutrality can fall a long way short of being fair.’
– John F Burns, chief foreign correspondent and London bureau chief of The New York Times
‘Science, of all things, should not come down to blind faith, and reporting needs to make sharp distinctions between scientific evidence and scientists’ opinions, especially when someone has wandered from their own field of expertise.’
– Quentin Cooper, presenter of BBC Radio’s science programme The Material World