This was announced today and it was nice to see them get recognized for all they they’ve done this year in battling not only the ■■■■■■■■ in the Trump admin., but also around the world.
Modern misinformation, says David Patrikarakos, author of the book *“War in 140 Characters” titled after the original maximum length of a Twitter post, “does not function like traditional propaganda. It tries to muddy the waters. It tries to sow as much confusion and as much misinformation as possible, so that when people see the truth, they find it harder to recognize.”
The story of this assault on truth is, somewhat paradoxically, one of the hardest to tell. “We all learned in our schools that journalists shouldn’t be the story ourselves, but this is, again, not our choice,” says Can Dündar, who, after being charged with revealing state secrets and nearly assassinated as a newspaper editor in Turkey, fled to Germany, where he set up a news site. “This is the world of the strong leaders who hate the free press and truth.”
Journalists have exposed politicians all over the world this past year and for some it has cost them their lives. It’s good to see them get recognized in this way. Here’s to more truth next year and that journalists keep shaking things up as they should.
Khashoggi (correct spelling) is one of those who is cited. You might want to read the link.
Khashoggi put his faith in bearing witness. He put it in the field reporting he had done since youth, in the newspaper editorship he was forced out of and in the columns he wrote from lonely exile. “Must we choose,” he asked in the Washington Post in May, “between movie theaters and our rights as citizens to speak out, whether in support of or critical of our government’s actions?” Khashoggi had fled his homeland last year even though he actually supported much of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s agenda in Saudi Arabia. What irked the kingdom and marked the journalist for death was Khashoggi’s insistence on coming to that conclusion on his own, tempering it with troubling facts and trusting the public to think for itself.
There are thousands of “press” who work hard every day to keep the American people informed by reporting the facts. Many put their lives at risk to do so. It’s sad you don’t value those people.
