Journalist's main responsibility is to tell the true

Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world: poetry with the feel of the world. Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like to any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

The purpose of journalism is to document life, to record events and situations for the sake of their relevance and effect. The dispute between MacLeish's vision of journalism and that of critics like Lee, who wish journalists "to do the timely thing with the eternal touch" , is not over journalism's purpose, but how it should go about fulfilling it.


Most writing, even fiction, documents history's passing in one way or another. None, however, do it with the deliberateness and intent of journalism. Other genres of nonfiction document events only as far as it serves their primary purposes. The purpose of journalism leads it to record moments for the sake of those moments, to record history as it happens

Objectivity is a lie.Its value to the purpose of journalism purpose is inflated."To deny the shaping presence of the reporter because of the theoretical demands of detachment and objectivity is to be fundamentally dishonest with the reader as well as oneself" . The principles of objectivity and detachment are useful also insofar as they remind journalists of the importance of evidence and open-mindedness within journalism. Any claim to authority based on those concepts is false.

In addition,journalist is never neutral, never a mere transmission belt. A great journalist must "exhibit an independent intelligence that seeks to wrest meaning from the torrents of event" .Invitable, If the journalist's purpose is to observe and record history as it occurs, he must be allowed the discretion to decide how best to do so. By inhibiting the interpretive intelligence of the writer, conventional journalism shackles itself and "can produce a trained incapacity for thought.

We are strongly agree that journalist's main responsibility is to tell the truth rather than help their newspaper or TV station make a profit by making the news sound more dramatic than it really is.