‘Journalism matters as a check and balance on those who wield power’
Sentinel editor-in-chief on the role local newspapers have in an ever-changing world...
“AGOOD newspaper,” the playwright Arthur Miller once said, “tis a nation talking to itself.”
Decades later, the maxim holds true, and is not limited in its sentiment to national media alone.
A good regional newspaper or website is, by the same token, a region talking to itself. And that conversation – made possible by journalism – matters.
This week is, as it happens, Journalism Matters Week. Granted, it’s unlikely you saw it marked on your calendar, and I’m doubtful you’ll have seen many people out waving banners and placards extolling the virtues of the media lately. But nonetheless, it’s important that in the midst of all that is going on around us, we take time to reflect on journalism, its place in a free society, and what we expect from it.
And for me, that idea of the regional media being the thing that facilities the community having that big conversation with itself, is central to why journalism matters so much. In a literal sense, that conversation takes place on our letters pages. In another sense, the conversation is achieved by us reporting on what happens so people can be more aware of what is going on around them.
Yes, journalism is an imperfect beast. And it’s true that the writer GK Chesterton said “journalism is reporting ‘Lord Jones is dead’ to people who didn’t know who Lord Jones was’,” but that’s a very small slice of the pie. Broadly, the role of journalism is to tell people what is happening in their community, for good or ill; what decisions are being
‘HELP US CHANGE THE LAW SO MY DARLING DAUGHTER’S DEATH IS NOT IN VAIN’
made in their name, and how those decisions will affect them.
I doubt anything I ever say will end up in any quotation books, but the more people know, the less likely they are to get turned over.
A society where too many decisions are made away from public scrutiny is one where we cannot be confident that fairness and justice are at the heart of the decisions being made.
We need only to look at the row engulfing parliament this week over the payments made to MP
Owen Paterson by firms he apparently lobbied on behalf of to know that it’s vital that we can be confident that those we elect to public office act only with the public interest in mind.
So, journalism matters as a check and balance on those who wield power and influence. But it is also a loudspeaker through which to amplify the voice of the communities it serves. To let those in power know when the community feels they’ve let them down, and to make loud and clear the need for change.
This is one of the great privileges of being a journalist; to be able to bring people together behind a common cause, to campaign for the things that matter.
In recent months, The Sentinel has been campaigning with the family of Harper-lee Fanthorpe for a change in the law around button batteries, following her horrific death, aged just two, after swallowing one that came out of a remote control. Thousands of people threw their support behind the bid to bring in legislation that will protect children from those highly dangerous household items. Our local MP Jo Gideon has taken the fight to parliament.
And parents across the region and beyond responded to the campaign by ridding their homes of these potentially deadly cells.
To have got those conversations going, on the pages of The Sentinel, in parliament, and in readers’ homes, is proof that journalism matters.
It is something that surely all of us recognise to be important and worth supporting.
So it’s left only to say thank you to you, our readers, for staying with us, and helping us to continue to do the journalism we know matters to you.