Journalists cast as villains need to recall their heroes

The press is proud of its triumphs. But now, under attack as never before, it needs to hold itself to its own values of transparency and rigour too

New years mean new leaves mean new challenges. And if there is one compelling challenge for journalists and their rough trade in 2018, it lies in re-establishing some modest degree of public respectability: in short, a measure of trust. For without a doff of the cap as big news breaks, there is only a shrug of the shoulders – which really means nothing at all.

And shrugging, when you contemplate the media wasteland of 2017, has been the pervasive reaction. Trump tweets across fields of cultured, East Coast derision. In Politico’s view, he defines the press as his “prime adversary”, not a foreign power, or terrorism, or an energy crisis; “he has changed the way we view the press and the way the press views itself.”

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from The Guardian http://ift.tt/2EjyOpl