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DR Darke's avatar

"Just doing your fucking job" as a journalist is often heroic, because using the press as a whipping boy to cover your own corruption is a long-standing issue for politicians and powerbrokers, to say nothing of police forces and militaries.

During the Falklands War, Berke Breathed did a cartoon about a British soldier calling out "Who goes there, friend or foe?" and the journalist yells back, "Press"—then has to jump in a foxhole as the British spray where he was standing with machinegun fire!

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PEACE, LOVE, RESIST's avatar

Telling the truth is expected in journalism, at least it used to be. Performing the basic expectations of your job doesn’t make you a hero. At my job, I get assaulted by 2nd and 3rd graders several times per week. I work with special needs kids who have zero emotional regulation. It’s expected that I will get hit, kicked, scratched or things thrown at me. Continuing to go to work every day to try again with these kids doesn’t make me or my colleagues heroes. Doing the right thing for the greater good is a privilege and journalism is no different. When they praise actors at the Oscars, I think, wow. How nice for them to get awards like that for doing their jobs. Must be nice.

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