DAVID CRONIN :
▻http://www.neurope.eu/article/truth-10-years-later-germany-helped-invasion-iraq
One or two days into the war, I found myself at a press conference given by Tony Blair. It was a salutary lesson about how the mainstream media is often supine towards the powerful. I had my hand raised for most of the event, seeking to ask Blair a question. Yet the prime minister would only deal with British reporters who he knew personally; there was a tacit understanding that none of them would give him a hard time. The thought of standing up and protesting at this quasi-censorship crossed my mind. To my regret, I didn’t have the guts to do so.
I am bolder and happier today than I was a decade ago. Around that time, I started to shed the illusions I had about my profession. Far too many journalists, I would later conclude, are little more than stenographers for an elite. Far too many of us kid ourselves into thinking that we are doing important work because we write down or record what “important” people tell us.
I was as guilty as anyone else. In 2003, I had a reasonably well-paid job with the weekly newspaper European Voice. This required me to feign something called objectivity. Eventually, I learned that objectivity is a synonym for intellectual cowardice. Journalists shouldn’t be trying to give equal weight to “both sides” in a story, especially if one of those sides is perpetrating a crime. We should be trying to expose what our political leaders are up to, not indulging them in the hope they might throw a scoop our way.