Essay On Dangers Of Journalism

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Recommended: Responsibilities of news media

Tom Stoppard, the Czech playwright, once said: “I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.” According to The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Journalism is a field where journalists work hard to report and transmit news to an audience. The transmission process is done through print (newspapers, magazines and books), broadcast (radio and television) and online (blogs, social networks...) media. This seems a very simple and easy job however journalism is not a safe and secure domain to work in; journalists may face different dangers throughout their working life.

The first reason why journalism is dangerous is because journalists might be killed because of their work or identity. Statistical analysis shows, that the highest percentages of killed journalists, were working on corruption (20%), war (36%) or political (44%) topics. However the same statistics show, that the medium with higher percentage of victims is printed media (51%), and males (93%) are mainly the ones who suffer from this tragedy. When asking about the way and the people behind the death of those journalists, numbers showed that 67% of the victims were murdered, which means this act was intended and there is someone behind it. The most suspected sources in these cases are government officials (23%) and political groups (30%). One of the victims is Chauncey Bailey. According to cleveland.com he was a reporter, working on that time on a short article about the bankruptcy that was said to be caused by a Black Muslim cult; Yusuf Bey IV. Bailey was shot by a masked man in august 2007in Oakland because of the subject of his article and the murder was done by the men of Yusuf Bey IV ...

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...n she used in her article.

Journalists around the world face a big number of dangers while working on a particular topic or in a defined place or country. Through history, a lot of journalists were killed, kidnapped or went missing and threatened or jailed. All these terroristic acts have a main purpose: to kill the truth and dominate the people. However the voice of the truth is so strong that it can’t be shut down. ‘Freedom of the press’ is one of the most crucial global issues nowadays and people should decode critically the messages they are receiving and the news they are getting about harmed journalists in order to understand where it is suppressed. In the mind of every journalist and citizen one question is being formed: is the press in the 21st century as free as we think it is or there is people modelling the content we get for their own benefit?

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