My personal journalistic journey began in 2018 when a friend invited me to mainland China to check out a Bitcoin mining farm. I wasn’t traveling to China on behalf of a media company, nor did I really know what I wanted to achieve during my time abroad – I was just a curious guy who wanted to know how crypto miners work in a country I’d never been to.
However, this adventure soon developed into a hobby before eventually turning into a career; a profession that I am immensely proud to be a part of, despite the vitriol and public hostility that we often have to endure. Unfortunately, over the last six years, I have watched this public hostility turn into apathy and, subsequently, distrust and hatred.
I am not only concerned about the state of journalism, I am worried about journalists around the world.
Let’s talk about Evan Gershkovich
Most recently, Evan Gershkovich was released from a Russian prison in exchange for a number of known Russian criminals and spies. What was Gershkovich guilty of? He was an American reporter in Russia’s authoritarian dictatorship.
When Gershkovich was released, I celebrated with my fellow journalists. What shocked and disturbed me, however, was the general public sentiment that reporters should be more responsible about where they report from, and that the United States should probably not conduct prisoner exchanges with journalists who have taken responsibility.
This is worrying.
On the one hand, some people will like to claim that journalism is largely about passing on and reinforcing biased opinions, that it rarely establishes facts and is more about advancing one’s own interests.
On the other hand, when a journalist travels to a foreign dictatorship to find out the truth by practicing the most old-fashioned form of journalism there is – On-site interviews – They are mocked and ridiculed because they have put themselves in a situation from which they cannot escape.
The public accuses journalists of not being real journalists, but at the same time of being the most serious and important professionals they can be. You can’t have it both ways.
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More journalists than ever are being arrested and killed
While the charts show that there was a downward trend in the number of journalist deaths between 2012 and 2023, everything has changed in 2024. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 113 journalists have been killed so far this year. That number is expected to continue rising by the end of December, and in all likelihood, more journalists will die in 2024 than in any previous year.
(We must, however, make the caveat to these figures that every single journalist murdered this year was in Palestine, Lebanon or Israel.)
Meanwhile, between 2014 and 2019, almost 1,500 journalists were arrested and 400 kidnappedIt turns out that while many people like to point out all the mistakes and opinions of journalists, few care about the thousands of reporters who have been killed, injured or arrested/kidnapped just for sharing their knowledge with the world.
There are very real consequences for high-impact journalism. For example, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was blown up for reporting on government corruption and criminal financial dealings. Although Galizia’s life was cut short nearly seven years ago, the consequences of her reporting continue to have massive ripple effects in Malta today – literally.
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In defense of the fourth power
It’s a popular cliche to blame “fake news” and the “lame mainstream media” for the disintegration of society, as if all journalists and news outlets are working together to destroy the globe and life as we know it. I can promise you that almost none of these people have ever worked in a newsroom.
Protos is a small newsroom—a tiny thing compared to the massive, multi-continental media companies that are defined as mainstream media, like CNN or Fox News—but even with just a handful of reporters and editors, it’s nearly impossible to get us to agree on a common view, and we’re certainly not organized enough to push any agenda.
Is Protos hostile? I hope so. Do we make fewer mistakes than the major media? Yes, mainly because we cover less news. Are we intentionally trying to destroy an industry, company or person? Absolutely not, nor do I believe that is ever the goal of any self-respecting media company.
I understand that it is much easier to blame media for doing what is asked of them and to mock journalists for either not being professional enough or caring too much about a story rather than their safety, but I hope that public opinion changes before we see an end to journalism as we know it.
Traditional media is all having an “enlightenment” as advertising dollars continue to dry up and AI summaries of news stories replace links to quality reporting. But before we rejoice, we should realize that this isn’t just the end of newspapers or rich people buying the truth. We’re seeing the end of entire newsrooms; a decentralization of the media that makes it harder to collaborate and do in-depth research.
But above all, we are witnessing a collapse in legal protection for journalists by the legal teams that the larger media outlets can afford.
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The loss of these protections and of larger media outlets has both good and bad side effects: the democratization of journalism is fantastic, but the fact that individual journalists are being silenced by strategic lawsuits against public participation is not.
So before you cheer the end of an era and adamantly claim that all journalists are bad, take a deep breath and think about the future you want. It may not be the future you’re getting if the rhetoric against the fourth estate continues unabated.
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