{"id":930,"date":"2008-05-07T02:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T08:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=930"},"modified":"2008-12-20T19:58:57","modified_gmt":"2008-12-20T19:58:57","slug":"courage-and-impotence-in-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/05\/courage-and-impotence-in-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Courage and impotence in journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>here is an exceptional and very poignant post from a sacked Chinese journalist translated and reproduced at the China Digital Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I am afraid of other people praising me as a brave newspaperman, because I know I am full of fear in my heart. I did write some commentaries on current affairs, and edited some articles that exposed the truth.<\/p>\n

I lost my job and was threatened for speaking the truth.<\/p>\n

However, to be honest, these were exceptional cases. They were my miscalculations. In my various media positions in the past decade, what I\u2019ve practised most is avoiding risk.<\/p>\n

Self-censorship has become part of my life. It makes me disgusted with myself.<\/p>\n

Some of my peers are proud of their censorship skills, and like to show it off to employers. I have similar skills, and I am using them everyday.<\/p>\n

But I am deeply uncomfortable with it. I feel ashamed about it, just like an executioner knows that he is good at killing.<\/p>\n

I could console myself by saying that I am not alone in avoiding risks. There are risks in all professions, and everybody has to know how to control it\u2026<\/p>\n

However, the media industry is different. I participate in telling lies to the public whenever I cancel a good news story, whenever I delete a sentence of truth, if we regard the media as a public good.<\/p>\n

I could also excuse my cowardice by saying that tens of thousands of jobs are at stake if I speak the truth. I should take responsibility for others who rely on the publication for a living\u2026<\/p>\n

However, I have to admit that I wouldn\u2019t have the courage to speak out, if there were not so many colleagues associated with me, or if I was required to make sacrifices to secure their jobs. How can I use others as my fig leaf and pretend to be noble?<\/p>\n

\u2026Compared to the importance of the media to the society, what I\u2019ve done is very limited. I should be ashamed of taking such an important position in this industry and not doing more. I should be more ashamed when I get honors for my work.<\/p>\n

Even if I don\u2019t have the courage and capacity to do more than I can do now, I should at least live honestly and conscientiously, and be aware of my cowardice and impotence<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/p>\n

And now the guy needs a job…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an exceptional and very poignant post from a sacked Chinese journalist translated and reproduced at the China Digital Times: I am afraid of other people praising me as a brave newspaperman, because I know I am full of fear in my heart. I did write some commentaries on current affairs, and edited some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2154,1718,2153,2155,2151,2409,2067,2152],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-censorship","tag-china","tag-china-digital-times","tag-courage","tag-impotence","tag-journalists","tag-media-industry","tag-media-positions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}