LETTER: Robert Fisk, the people’s journalist
In the era of Trumpism, when lies and disinformation are elevated above truth and reason, we remember what it means to be a journalist
What does it mean to be a journalist? Bill Emmott, the former editor of The Economist, says “there are many wonderful things about being a journalist. The excitement of responding to, and trying to make sense of, the flow of news. The challenge of trying to sort out the wood from the trees ... yet that is also where the limitations of journalism begin.
“Our perspective is always a fairly short-term one. Our readers want to know how something that happened today might be connected to something that happened yesterday ... the journalist is constantly at risk of over-interpreting the short-term and under-rating or under-interpreting the long-term trends.”..
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