Jan Wifstrand, soon to leave his post as editor of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, offers some valuable and tough criticism of journalists in an interview in his own paper. His four points are easily recognisable if you’ve been in the business:
- Need a better world? Ask me!: “I am a journalist, I’m capable of improving the world” – a finer version of a besserwisser mentality, according to Wifstrand. Often it is presented as a good thing that journalists generally are reform-oriented people. But what happens when that attitude is combined with arrogance and limited knowledge?
- Desperately seeking correctness: Critical thinking, skepticism towards seemingly self-evident truths – journalist ideals, right? Not exactly, Wifstrand thinks: Journalists are very anxious to represent a “correct” views.
- Tyranny of simplification: Journalists need to simplify the complex, highlight what’s important in the stream of information. But often the simplification goes too far, and we end up being imprecise or just plain wrong.
- Thin-skinned species: Many journalists are very jumpy when readers or sources dare to criticize us. Wifstrand: “We have to come to terms with our responsibility, because what we do can influence hundreds of thousands of people. We should have a deeper understanding of our ethics and reveal more about ourselves.”
