The development and progress of human society always brings about new situations, creates new professions and changes the nature of the ones that exist already. One of the occupations that has recently undergone rather drastic changes is that of a journalist.
In general, the very existence of such a job is made possible only by a certain degree of the human society’s development. Until the communication between different inhabited regions became easy enough, there had not been a notion of anything similar to what nowadays is understood as journalism – the vocation of making information available to the public. The news until that moment travelled with the armies of warlike lords, traders’ caravans and ships, vagabonds and settlers. Until the moment when happenings in other parts of the world, or even in your own vicinity, are understood as a commodity, there is no journalism possible.
However, after its appearance there may have been constructive changes in outline, but not in the heart of the profession. Identical to its nature in the times of the first European newspapers, the journalists’ work is to provide his readers (listeners, viewers) with information; the less obtainable it is, the more valuable is his work. That is why the representatives of this trade are so much hated in totalitarian states – journalists embody the freedom of information, while any dictatorship is based on reality – and mind -control and doesn’t let anybody have any opinion of their own.
That is why journalist should take into consideration any ideas of his duty to his country, his leaders or suchlike; his only duty is that to his readers, the ones whom he supplies with information, no matter how much somebody may be eager to conceal it.