Independence. That other thing journalists have to worry about.

Last class was all about journalistic independence, and the aspect of it I found the most interesting is what I think of as the human nature aspect. It is harder for journalists to separate themselves from their stories when they involve human suffering or have direct correlation to their own lives. For example, many journalists found it hard to cover the September 11th terrorist attacks. I found an example of this in an article called Found in the Flood by Eric Alterman (http://www.thenation.com/article/found-flood) where many stories about the tragedy were told through the lens of almost government hatred. It was difficult for the journalist to be completely independent of what they were seeing because of the emotion it stirred in them. I could not even imagine what it would be like to watch that many people suffer to that extent. Furthermore, some journalists could not be independent of the racial aspect of the situation. From one viewpoint, they were covering what they were sent their to cover, and there were indeed a disproportionate number of Black people than Whites, and everyone there was poor. As journalists, however we are not supposed to let our emotion, or disdain to a slow moving government, shine through our story. Independence. Objectivity. This is truly a difficult situation to apply these concepts to, but they must become second nature for journalism to be effective.

None of the journalistic principles we have learned about seem like they will be very easily practiced, but in the context of human tragedy, I think independence may be one of the most difficult for me to deal with personally.