Select at least one of the quotations/summaries from the film we viewed in class. The quotations are recorded on the following pages. Use the quotation as the basis for a “think piece” wherein you make an argument about how this statement addresses the role of the journalist in a democracy. In what ways is each statement accurate? In what ways is this statement unrealistic? How, if at all, would you modify the statement more accurately to reflect your position about the appropriate role of journalism in the United States?

Your paper should be five to seven pages long (one inch margins, 12 point type). Feel free to supplement your comments with ideas presented in the film and additional materials from other sources, but be sure to cite any external references you might make.

Take notes while you watch the film for reference in your paper. I will put the video on reserve at the library after we’ve had the viewing in class.

This paper is due at the beginning of class on September 26.
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Gideon Levy- Tel Aviv, West Bank/Ha’Aretz
One thing I want to prevent: That there will not be one single reader who will say–“I didn’t know. I didn’t know we were doing those things.”

I’m showing us to ourselves. I’m putting up a mirror. I show the ugly side, the dark side....

Andrew Kromah- Sierra Leone
I don’t feel it’s ... a true democracy without empowering the people, without educating the people. The vision is to have a nation where information is flowing freely.

I’m giving people freedom to express themselves and letting them know they’re free to collect information. Actually, I am a counterpart to the government. Democracy is about the people who are governed and the people who are governing the people themselves. Journalists are in between the two. ...

Hannah Foullah –Sierra Leone
There has to be an independent voice. If there’s no independent voice then there’s no democracy.

Ricardo Rocha–Mexico
We always try to give a voice to the voiceless, to all these marginal groups, so that the camera can record their voices and transmit them everywhere--because the majority in a democracy is the sum of all the minorities.

Journalists should have an ideological commitment. We have a commitment to the public to provide in-depth information. It’s the recognition that we are seeking the truth. We do not own it. We may not find it. But, we are seeking it.

The role of the communicator is necessarily condemned to stress. But we also have great satisfaction. For me especially, that I have been allowed to explore the human soul.

Chris Anyanwu–Nigeria
Nigerian journalists have always sought the truth. You watch who’s doing things wrong, you write about it, you ask questions. Why didn’t they do this, why are you doing that? You see the problems, you push them. Why aren’t you solving the problems? Quite often, they label certain types of information as sacred. We do not think that all things need to be labeled as sacred.

When the military came, the government was trying to dictate to us what to think, what to say. No soldier will dictate to me how I’m going to write or how, I’m going to report reality.

Every story we run here must have a social significance. How does it impact on the people?

We know that our people hunger for accurate information. The sort of information that develops the mind, that aids them in coping with life, and we try to give them that.

Deborah Nelson/Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times
By nature, true investigative journalists don’t work for anybody. They work for the story. Investigative reporting is hard to do and takes a long time. Not only do you have to gather the evidence, enough evidence to persuade people that there’s a problem, that there’s an injustice and by golly we should do something about it, but we have to write it in a way that when they read it at the kitchen table, they’ll choke on their coffee and say ‘We’ve got to do something about this.’

Investigative reporting is setting your own agenda. It’s not chasing someone else’s investigation.
It’s having the government chase yours. It’s doing your own independent research to determine what’s true and what’s not.

People have to have assurance that they’re making decisions for the right reasons. And if they’re not, then they have to have the information that will allow them to make the right decisions when they go to the polls.

We’re here for a purpose. Our job is to make the world a better place by exposing wrong. And exposing it in a way that people can see how to fix it and holding out hope that they actually will fix it.

Carlotta Gall-NYT
The most powerful thing is information. If people really know the truth or know what’s going on, they’re so much more empowered to have control over their lives and the fate of their country.

Maybe we should just be more honest with ourselves. We are patriotic. We are going to regard the enemy as the enemy even if we’re journalists. Maybe our democratic traditions did go out the window a bit after the World Trade Center. ... Our great traditions in a war aren’t so strong.

Dana Priest - Washington Post
The big story is “Are we changing as a country?” If you settle on a new set of standards, laws and ethics, are you going to be going in the direction that you hoped you were going in–a safer world, or not? I don’t know the answer to that. But I know that if you don’t even know where you are now, you’re not going to know where that system is moving you to. My goal is to try and describe–where are we now. And now I find myself in this era where people are saying, “we don’t want to know that, why are you writing that?” I still have to shove it in the paper, because fundamentally, I think you’re going to give away your democracy if you don’t take responsibility for the decisions that are made in your name. And we could be doing that right now in this shift of values and parameters and laws and interpretations of what we are in the world if we cede too much to the government then I think we will trade off what has made us a great country.

Anna Politskovkaya, Novaya Gazeta
It’s a return to following the rules established by those in power. Which subjects are allowed and which are forbidden. They call this freedom. I think this is absolutely not freedom.

[Anna Politkovskaya once asked the material question, “Is journalism worth your life?” Anna thinks it is.]

“The truth about what is happening --if you are the transmitter of this truth, and I think of myself as simply a transmitter–that is worth a life.”

[On October 7, 2006, having just completed a new story about torture by the Kremlin-sponsored government of Chechnya, Anna Politskovkaya was shot dead outside her Moscow apartment. She was 48 years old.]

Yoel Esteron-Tel Aviv/Ha’Aretz
Sometimes you have to upset your readers to do your job. Maybe it pays off in the long run.

A major obstacle journalists face is public reluctance to look in the mirror journalists hold up.

To be independent you have to be working in a newspaper with a legacy of independence with a legacy of not being impressed by the powers that be whether it’s the government or the readers.

Amira Hass-Tel Aviv, Gaza/Ha’Aretz
The first role of a journalist is to monitor power. This is the main thing. And to observe, locate centers of power in the society and to monitor them and to expose them. We are the unelected monitoring team. .

...A paper gives you... a collection, ... a mosaic of information. It’s not that everyone is supposed to say everything, or give you everything.

Amos Schocken-Tel Aviv/H’Aretz
Telling the truth is always a part of our main business and there are no questions about it.