Belinda Giles sent me the following email: Dear Adrian I am a university student in Western Australia, studying law/journalism. I am working on an opinion piece for the journalism component – the subject is ‘journalism is the lifeblood of democracy’. During my googling I came across your blog – ‘a blog about news’. I have…

Janet Malcolm has some choice words about journalism in her extended essay in the 3 May 2010 New Yorker. Over the years, the social status and the education level of journalists has risen and some journalists write extremely well. But the profession retains its transgressiveness. Human frailty continues to be the currency in which it…

Reading the New Yorker the other day, I came across the following line (subscription required) from chef Heston Blumenthal (renowned for using the lab techniques of food science for luxury catering rather than mass production). Blumenthal was writing about growing up in the gastronomic wilderness of 1970s Britain: …a time when olive oil was available…

Given Nick Davies‘ story alleging mass mobile phone-hacking by journalists, it might perhaps be instructive to look back at the journalistic morals of another age. Here, by way of example, is ‘Journalism and Morality’ by Silas Bent, published in 1926 in The Atlantic (and quoted in Can You Trust The Media?). Note especially – towards…