Constructive journalism

Journalism needs an overhaul. It is time for a better form of journalism, and that is not a criticism of journalists, and it is not even about the struggling economic model that is supposed to fund journalism. Let’s lay on the table at the outset that most journalists are aiming to do the right thing. However, journalism as a profession has lost its way so that even the most high-minded of journalists are operating under a pressure that leads to producing mostly useless distraction. This article is about the move towards creating a paradigm of journalistic practice that can revitalise the essential societal institution that is journalism and, more importantly, the society in which it operates.

A loss of trust

Around the world there is a profound disintegration in trust in societal institutions, including in democracy itself. At the heart of that meltdown is journalism. Faith and interest in what journalism has to offer is at an all-time low. Although we are at the nadir now, in truth the decline in journalism’s reputation goes back more than a century. In 1919, American author Upton Sinclair wrote in his book “When you read your daily paper, are you reading facts or propaganda?” That concern about the value of what journalism produces is reaching fever pitch in the