Word: journaliste
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...guilt that flows from this feeling of power is not simply guilt over the events the journalist writes about. Rather, it is guilt over his role as a journalist. Like any good American, he is fearful of his own supposed power, so he justifies it by saying that he is channeling it into responsibility, to the community, that is, the whole country...
...result, the journalist feels paternalistic about his country. He believes then, that he should not shake anything up. The stake in American institutions that he has is rooted in a justification of his own power. But this stake in institutions, this responsibility for America, is merely a responsibility to the American system as it stands. The liberal journalist is simply unable to perform as a critic with this guilt and this responsibility in his mind...
...EXTREME case of this sense of responsibility stemming from guilty is Joseph Kraft. In a column written after Chicago, Kraft said that the journalist does not reflect the views of Middle America (Nixon's "silent Americans," Reston's "nonpolitical majority"), and he questions whether the reporter can then claim to be the "agent of the sovereign public...
...here Kraft makes the same assumption that all liberal journalists make, an assumption that is the basis of the guilt problem. The journalist is not the "agent of the sovereign public" at all. He is the agent of his won newspaper, which cannot pretend to represent everyone in the nation. And as a columnist, he is an agent of himself. These are his views on paper, his very own. He does not need any more of a justification for his writing than that. His feeling of responsibility to the entire country makes him less of a writer. It makes...
This freedom from guilt and from responsibility is so necessary to a journalist. Today, he is simply publicizing someone else's nightmare. When the day comes, he will write: "Gestapo officials estimated today that 346 detainees were exterminated by the state because of crimes . . . " He will sit down and write it, because he has no values. He is afraid to have them because he is afraid of a power that he does not have...