All the President’s Men is a film adaptation of the true life account written by Woodward and Bernstein, two reporters for the Washington Post, of how they made public the ‘complex web of political scandals between 1972 and 1974’ surrounding President Nixon. (Watergate.info, 1995) When the story finally broke it resulted in the resignation of the president himself and universal reverence for Woodward and Bernstein. They were viewed as investigative crusaders after the truth, critics of the powerful, and watchdogs of the public interest and therefore are presented as such within the film. This view of the reporter as a hero has unfortunately been lost, although it is unsurprising due to the general decline in the morals of prominent members
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Murdoch is a prime example of how the new capitalist media can warp journalist’s morals so as to keep making a profit; he leaned on his staff to write stories that were in keeping with the preferences of the political leaders that he was currently backing. This breeds a particularly bad public image for journalists, and calls into question their roles as critics of the powerful. Davis is particularly pessimistic about the state of journalism as he believes that journalists now ‘work within a kind of professional cage which distorts their work and crushes their spirit.’(Davies, 2008) However, in 1997 The Time’s China specialist, Jonathan Mirsky, resigned after his repeated attempts to write about the suppression of the descent within China were restricted, which shows that although editors like Murdoch exist the journalists working for them will still stand up when they feel as though their ethics are in question. So to some extent journalists are still seen as ‘critics of the powerful’ and ‘watchdogs of the public interest’, despite the existence …show more content…
In August 2007 he released a secret Kroll report to the Guardian which claimed to prove that the former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi had been hiding millions of pounds that he had siphoned off of Kenya’s state finances in foreign bank accounts. (Rice, 2007) The report was shown to the Kenyan government but was not acted upon due to another scandal, Anglo Leasing, arising with regards to the current president so no action was taken. However, Assange clearly believed that this information should be made available to the general public and therefore saw the release of the information as a matter of public interest. It was not only information hidden by the Kenyan government he released, Assange aimed to expose corruption around the world. In 2008/9, for example, the British high courts ordered a number of documents to be concealed and banned them from being published, and also prohibited any reporting of the court proceedings themselves. Assange released these documents, including a 2009 report detailing Barclays tax avoidance strategies, via the WikiLeaks website. (Leigh et al.,
Murdoch is a prime example of how the new capitalist media can warp journalist’s morals so as to keep making a profit; he leaned on his staff to write stories that were in keeping with the preferences of the political leaders that he was currently backing. This breeds a particularly bad public image for journalists, and calls into question their roles as critics of the powerful. Davis is particularly pessimistic about the state of journalism as he believes that journalists now ‘work within a kind of professional cage which distorts their work and crushes their spirit.’(Davies, 2008) However, in 1997 The Time’s China specialist, Jonathan Mirsky, resigned after his repeated attempts to write about the suppression of the descent within China were restricted, which shows that although editors like Murdoch exist the journalists working for them will still stand up when they feel as though their ethics are in question. So to some extent journalists are still seen as ‘critics of the powerful’ and ‘watchdogs of the public interest’, despite the existence …show more content…
In August 2007 he released a secret Kroll report to the Guardian which claimed to prove that the former Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi had been hiding millions of pounds that he had siphoned off of Kenya’s state finances in foreign bank accounts. (Rice, 2007) The report was shown to the Kenyan government but was not acted upon due to another scandal, Anglo Leasing, arising with regards to the current president so no action was taken. However, Assange clearly believed that this information should be made available to the general public and therefore saw the release of the information as a matter of public interest. It was not only information hidden by the Kenyan government he released, Assange aimed to expose corruption around the world. In 2008/9, for example, the British high courts ordered a number of documents to be concealed and banned them from being published, and also prohibited any reporting of the court proceedings themselves. Assange released these documents, including a 2009 report detailing Barclays tax avoidance strategies, via the WikiLeaks website. (Leigh et al.,