The final lecture, week 12's Investigative Journalism, was interesting; primarily because of two of journalism's purposes:
-To provide a voice for those without one and to hold the powerful to account.
-The Fourth Estate, the Fourth Branch of Government, and "Watchdog".
Basically, conveying power to the powerless, and a voice to the voiceless. This is exactly what is compulsory in, and what I enjoy in, journalism: to watch the newspapers be the voice of the actual public, those with a true opinion, unlike the many papers today that are not opinionated, but judgmental. Journalism can act as the fulcrum between the people and the government, flowing information between the two.
More still, another topic touched on the lecture was extremely comforting: trailblazing, and amazingly enough LOCAL investigative journalism. Even though we live in Australia, land of the young and freely disinterested and exciting only for those who've come across the sea, news can exist at anytime, anywhere. Even here, there is always a story waiting to be told.
The methods of finding a story in investigative journalism
As always though, the integrity of journalism and it's limitless opportunities for stories can be crushed. The mind-numbing propaganda 'fact'-based stories can distort the truth more than anything, even Photoshop. These attempts at truths, while mostly guesstimates at reality, are entertaining, which I presume is the only reason remotely intelligent people would buy it.
And as always, journalism can be revived. At the end of the lecture, an article showed YouTube (easily the world's largest video sharing site) was considering creating a service dedicated to investigative journalism. The last slide, thankfully enough, showed that it had.
Thanks for the reading.
Charlie Morris
