The Noblest Profession

I always loved to read the newspaper. Even as a kid, I would scour our local paper after my father finished reading it. What I didn’t know way back then, was just how important the people behind the written word were to a democracy. To our way of life.

In our society, journalism is the noblest profession. Not the loud mouthed commentators on television, but the ones behind the keyboard who spend months cultivating relationships with sources, asking the tough questions, and risking their own liberty for the truth.

We tend to think that it is only the reporters that go into conflict zones that truly put themselves at risk, but we’ve seen in recent times that is too simple a view.

In October 2018 Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, ostensibly by “rogue killers” or some other such nonsense. What became clear very quickly was that he was murdered to silence his voice, which had been critical of the Saudi leadership. In the upcoming film, The Dissident, director Bryan Fogel promises to share evidence that will reveal those who were really behind his murder.

Another journalist suffering for her work, albeit in a different way, is Carole Cadwalladr. Two of her most well known investigative works include revealing the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal and uncovering illicit funding of the Vote Leave Brexit campaign. The latter work made her the subject of a defamation lawsuit that has damaged her financially.

Journalism has changed tremendously since the days when I would wait for my father to discard the newspaper so I could read it. When the profession was damaged by the “everything for free” internet culture, journalist adapted. The rise of the independent blogger helped to fill the void, and people like Julian Assange who created websites designed to leak information. Assange’s most famous work was the release of the “collateral murder” video. I suspect it was that video in particular that has put him in the position he is in today. He’s been robbed of his liberty — his freedom — having spent seven years locked in an embassy and now another year in jail.

The threats faced by journalists are vast, and we can best repay their noble work by buying the articles they write.

My favorites, and the ones that I support, include: Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, the Financial Times, the Globe and Mail, and The Intercept. Others that I casually support are Democracy Now and Wikileaks.