Media Ethics

It is the fate and responsibility of journalists to make certain sacrifices. It is sad, but true. Becoming a journalist is a trust that is rarely taken with the gravitas that it merits. When one becomes a journalist they must give up their committments to two things. First they may have no opinions. Their opinions are to be subordinated to the facts. They must be opinion-celebate - ie, not have any. A journalist with an opinion is not a journalist, he is someone who tell you what he thinks, not what happened. Journalists tell you what happened. Second, a journalist sacrifices his right to be news, in favor of reporting it. Journalists are given a certain amount of fame and publicity and public recognition in exchange for their simply gaining access to those media that are clost to those of us whose lives costrain us away from the news. When a journalist becomes his own story he has hit the farthest point from objectivity. A journalist who cannot even put up the pretense of objectivity is not a journalist.

Peter Arnet violated both of those by giving an interview to Iraqi TV. His responsibility was to be there and tell us what happened, not to be someone we have to find out about too. Airing his opinions, and even just having them, also violates what we want in a journalist, someone who will give us the news.

He deserves to be fired, and removed from whatever professional organizations journalists have. He is a disgrace to the profession. He forgot where the line was between making and being the news, and he also forgot the line between the news page and the op-ed page.

If anyone now says "Oh, such and such is true - I saw it on the news" it is suspect. We can reply "It is like when Peter Arnet reports something, you got his OPINION".

No ne had any illusions that anyone inthe media was objective, but apparently he tried the least.