I have been lucky in my life in that I have been able to spend it working at various facets of my chosen profession, a profession I unabashedly admit that I love.
I confess to a certain amount of cynicism from time to time, and of course there is the every day drudgery, but the excitement is still there, and the wonder and the enthusiasm and desire to know.
I sometimes think this dewey-eyed nonsense is just that, and that someone who has been in the profession as long as I have should be well and truly past that.
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I was delighted last week to have my feelings vindicated by no less a person than CBC broadcaster and TV personality Wendy Mesley, who was in Regina to give the annual James M. Minifie lecture.
She titled her speech My Life as a Dinosaur, and indeed to some, her feelings about journalism may seem old-fashioned.
“Journalism is something important,” she said. “It matters … it can be a proud calling.”
She spoke at length about the difference between public relations and journalism.
Our mandate is not the same, Mesley said. Public relations is about selling. Journalism is about information. Public relations gives one side. It is the journalist’s job to give all sides.
Public relations is about making people believe what the spin doctors want them to believe. Good journalism is about clarity.
Mesley admitted it is hard not to get cynical but “you don’t have to get cynical about journalism.”
Sometimes, she said, journalists are selling a product too. She spoke about the current trend to writing “easy selling” stories such as gossip and chatty columns that supposedly is what people want.
In this chatty trend, there is no such thing as objectivity, she said.
One just knew that Mesley prefers what she called “the old-fashioned way,” when the journalist’s job was to stir the pot, to make readers think about the story.
Journalists are meant to be monitors and conduits, she said, telling as truthfully as they can what happened and letting the people decide for themselves how they feel about it.
Covering some beats can present problems, she said. Journalists like to think of themselves as independent thinkers, but at times the pack mentality takes over when editors and producers demand the story of the day.
Mesley said journalists must strive to write stories that matter, not stories meant to titillate.
It was obvious that, after several years in the profession, she still has stars in her eyes from time to time.
She concluded: “We have to treat journalism with respect and maybe people will respect us more.”
