When did journalism become so crass? So weaponized, not against oppression but against dissent? How did a profession, whose lifeblood is dissent, become so opposed to differing opinions?
So much so that we feel the need to lace journalistic outputs with insults to get traction? To be judge and jury, declaring guilty verdicts and cancelling “opposition”, when presenting incontrovertible proof and stepping back is the job?
Was it a witting decision to become the spectacle? So that the profession has now become a contest of personalities taking attention away from the journalistic product?
Is this the new paradigm? From fighters for freedom to just fighters, plain and simple, and on the “streets” to boot? Are we still the “gentlemen and women of the press”?
Does the Fourth estate still exist as a realm that balances out the other three? Will it continue to? Journalism faces many, often intractable challenges, journalists’ devolution shouldn’t have to be one of them.
This is no wide sweeping indictment, especially not on those tagged. We’re besieged by forces that demand silence, tearing ourselves up from the inside out doesn’t appear a good battle strategy.
Taiwo Adenike Aloba