What Is The Primary Role Of Journalists, Male Or Female? “Society’s Watchdogs,” Says Amrie Cruzon. Sorry, Those Ladies Are Looking For Bad News Rather Than Good News!

Above, are we looking at “The Guardians of PH Society? Journalists anywhere today behave as Amrie Cruzon believes: “The primary role of journalists as society’s watchdogs” (11 May 2022, “Local Women Broadcasters Force Us To Reflect On Journalistic Integrity Post-Elections,” preen.ph, preen.ph). Me, I  prefer good news to bad news.

(“Good News” image from Dreamstime, dreamstime.com)

Being a prominent single-minded and strident bad-news guardian of PH society as a whole is what won for Maria Ressa the Nobel Peace Prize 2021. With its Peace Prize, the Nobel Foundation is in fact rewarding those people who go out looking for the bad news rather than the good news!

Saturday, 02 July 2022, I challenged Ms Maria to publish a good news magazine – “Culture Agriculture” (02 July 2022, “Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize 2021 Winner – Why Not Your Journeys In Journalism Pleasing To You And Others? My Challenge In Peace: Journalism As Foods For Thought & Stomach!” Towards A New Eden, towardsaneweden.blogspot.com). No reply – Ms Maria not interested in good news?

Today, journalism is too much bad news and too little good news.

The American Press Institute (americanpressinstitute.org) says:

“The purpose of journalism,” write Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements Of Journalism, “is [neither] defined by technology, nor by journalists [nor] the techniques they employ.” Rather, “the principles and purpose of journalism are defined by something more basic: the function news plays in the lives of people.”

“The function news plays in the lives of people” – it turns out Ms Amrie had knowledge of this function, saying:

This journalistic ethos extends to culture and lifestyle publications as well as independent content creators. What type of culture and lifestyle are we projecting as aspirational? How are we making sense of the world we live in? What type of world are we helping shape it to be?

Congrats, Ms Amrie! Lady journalists, you should all be investigating for and writing about the good of society: good home, good soil, good food, and good climate. Like, the farmers need you!

Well, I don’t blame you because even the members of the Philippine Agricultural Journalists Inc (PAJ) have reported little for the good of agriculture except about harvests in farms, costs of production, prices of foods and fertilizers, and even harvests being thrown away because of low prices.

For almost 3 years, August 2019-June 2022, Secretary of Agriculture William Dar was spreading the gospel that he called “The New Thinking For Agriculture (TNT for A), with its “8 Paradigms” (guide concepts). And yet journalists, PAJ members included, hardly wrote about TNT for A, as if it did not exist! If they did not understand those paradigms, why did they not ask Mr Dar?

I kept writing about TNT for A, but I was a wolf of one in the wilderness, you might say, crying. (Check out my blog, Towards A New Eden, towardsaneweden.blogspot.com.) And the ladies (and gentlemen) of the press? Silent as lambs!@517