JOURNALISM

Do you believe journalism has become voyeuristic ?

Voyeur

·                  a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity:he stood transfixed, a voyeur feasting on the swell of her buttocks

·                  a person who enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others:a voyeur of deathmurder trials make us voyeurs

Voyeuristic – Adjective

I don’t believe journalism has become voyeuristic. To claim journalism has become voyeuristic implies the journalists to be voyeurs and that journalists were not always voyeurs.  We do not say a peeping tom was being journalistic, so why would we say journalists are being voyeuristic.

Journalists have a job to find a new angle, and to have new information before someone else.  To do this journalists become intrusive and push boundaries, or even over step boundaries.

Certainly journalism is intrusive, but people will read, watch, or listen to what they want.  Journalists are just providing information, people will choose what they want to do with that information. In the “news of the world” saga, phone hacking was a technique to obtain information not the act of watching for enjoyment of the demise of others. It was illegal and immoral, but a far cry from voyeurism. I guess it’s actions like this that cause others to put a more sordid spin on it by people who wouldn’t or have gone that far to separate intrusive journalism from very intrusive journalism.

Journalism has always been intrusive, but the increase in the ways information can be gained and transmitted, has also increased the volume, and depth, of information being accessible to the audience. News no longer has to be selective, people don’t have to wait a day, a week, or a month, for the next update, or to find out what is new. It is now a case of what is happening right now, so yes there is the aspect of watching to see watch happens, but it’s not for self-enjoyment, the only intent is to have that information first to distribute.

Minute by minute news updates does not mean the journalist is being voyeuristic but merely doing their job.  They are simply providing information to which the people can choose to pay attention to, or disregard. If we bastardise words to the point where they no longer hold the original meaning then can’t we all be labelled something we are not and our actions be seen as something more sinister then they are.