Mass media has an important role for our society in a social development, it can improve the world in which we live and its serious problems, but the purpose is intending to reach the largest audience as possible. Which is why it is supposedly the easiest way to denounce the worst issues that we can, as people, encounter in our life in order to make the world a better place.
The profession’s relationship with the truth remains complex, as its handling risks threatening the private life or “vital” interests of countries, and can fuel external socio-political pressures against the press, or even inert pressures that can lead to conflict situations within the editorial offices themselves. These socio-political pressures can take various forms: politics, public opinion, various forms of lobbying.
The reality can be appalling for the population. In the movie The Post (Spielberg, 2017) , the New York Times is publishing that 7000 pages are detailing a governmental secret regarding the White House which had been lying about the Vietnam War for 30 years. The New York Times and the Washington Post went to the Supreme Court for having published this incredible breaking-news and consequently, people started striking for freedom of press. Democratic governments are not supposed to hide anything to the population, even if we sometimes could have some doubt about the definition of democracy. When mass media report the reality, even if it is allowed, there is a pressure from governments and the lobbies. The US government tried as much as possible to hide the truth for the sake of the economy according to the politicians. The question of the sources appears in this movie, the law requires to have different sources than other newspaper, in this case, the New York Times, that is why it makes the truth difficult to be revealed.
The American reason of the Vietnam War was about communism, shortly afterwards World War II. A communism leader was actually controlling the North Vietnam, which is why the United States were afraid that communism would spread in the South Vietnam which used to be capitalist, then in the rest of Asia.
Even currently, the Americans do not fully understand the reason of the Vietnam War. “They seem to sense that the subject is like a dark family secret that might finally be exposed.” according to thenation.com (2015), when a person has grown up in a patriot country, it is easier to bury their head in the sand than admitting that the United States, their own country, did something immoral. The population needs to fight to see the truth, but when Media reveal it, people do not always accept it. The demands of the reader may end up compromising journalistic ethics. Thus, it seems that today’s readership needs to understand quickly and without difficulty; the journalist is asked to comment on facts in a simplistic way or to discard those which, too complex, would be likely to disturb the main currents of dominant thought running through public opinion. Information is increasingly tending to be expressed in the form of a continuous, easy and rapid flow where each breaking-news story chases the previous one.
Readers have become just as eager for sensations but also in a hurry to find in their favourite press the exact reflection of their desires: it pushes the journalist to be a voyeur and a trickster, preventing them from sorting according to their conscience between what seems to be true or false.
Thus, even if the press as a whole is under pressure of all kinds, which inevitably provokes conflict situations in the editorial offices, it should not be forgotten that the question journalists must ask themselves is not only about the part of the truth they can access, even if it is under constraint, but also about the methods to achieve it, and about the disclosure that can be made of it.
Indeed, even if the constraints exist and the rules of journalistic ethics may seem clear: “nothing but the truth, the whole truth”, it should nevertheless be possible to supplement it with the motto of the New York Times: “All the news that’s fit to print”; which therefore a priori excludes unworthy news: that is to say, any news whose disclosure would seriously harm the life or reputation of human persons, vital secrets of collective interest or the security of nations. Asking the right questions, without getting into the questions that others want to impose on us, is also the way to gain the freedom to think about one’s profession and to make citizens think.
People First News 