-- Download How to Spot a Good Journalist as PDF --

It’s getting harder and harder, what with constant corporate media concentration, and corporatist convergence of messaging from right wing governments and their informal corporate media PR departments.

But everyone once in a while we see evidence that there is a growing number of journalists who exist with integrity and can demonstrate meaningful contribution to society:

Also, we as journalists should be doing a better job realizing press releases are ads & shouldn't be reprinted/repeated.

— Carly Weeks (@carlyweeks) January 16, 2014

So let’s add Carly Weeks to the short list of good journalists in Canada.

The trick here, of course, is to make sure that journalists who appear to actually understand their role by tweeting a manifesto statement like this, actually are able to perform it. When Carly Weeks shows in this tweet that she gets it, it’s our job to make sure she is able to keep reporting up to that standard.

And when we see good journalism, we should amplify it. And when we see them drop the ball, we should offer constructive criticism.

The huge unknown unknown, however, rests in this question. If corporate media weren’t interested in profit-maximizing and sensationalism to pad ad revenues, and pushing policies of pro-corporate politicians, how much better could all the good journalists be; and how good could the bad journalists actually be.

Until we can get the profit motive out of journalism, we should amplify the media that is not so biased by greed.

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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun

Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

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