More on journalists

In chapter two, Hirst and McManus give journalists a pretty hard time and assert that "journalists are peddlers of a commodity called information that is marketed to commercial advantage". (Burns 2008, 25). Burns also goes on to state that the advertiser is the most important customer in journalism, and furthermore, that the advertiser is always right. Evidence of this can be found in the 'cash for comment' scandal - where John Laws was more than happy to 'advertise' banks to his listeners if it meant gaining a multi-million dollar deal (the ads were passed off as Laws' opinion). However, Laws maintained that he was not a journalist, but an entertainer and should therefore not be held accountable to a journalists code of ethics. The idea of journalists as entertainers is further explored in the text.

So how do we classify journalists if the proverbial line between journalists and entertainers is becoming increasingly blurred? Are the boys from 'Chasers' journalists or entertainers? They don't educate and inform in the traditional journalistic sense - but what they do is certainly a lot more appealing to a fifteen year old then reading a newspaper or watching SBS. They still discuss current affairs (though it seems as though they do more silly skits these days), so are they journalists or entertainers or both?

Burns sums up the ideological divide pretty well, stating: "it may be argued that the commercial imperative that seems so at odds with the aspirations of a free press is at the very core of the media's independence from government control, thus securing its role as a public watchdog". Poor journalists, there is obvious some serious conflict going on between their role to inform and educate and then their job to make profits for their bosses.