Why we cannot let journalism die: the Ukraine war highlights the importance of traditional news in a world dominated by social media influencers

As more people look to social media as their primary source of information, events like the Ukraine war highlight the importance of traditional journalism
Good journalists speak truth to power when lives are crushed in times of war and other catastrophes – influencers just tell us what to listen to and buy

Simon Parry

Published: 9:45am, 23 Jul 2022

Why you can trust SCMP

Journalists get a bad press these days, and it often leads to cheap shots and vulgar insults. I’ve been called a sanctimonious windbag, a dirt-digging low life and a washed up, sad old hack – and that’s just by my wife and children.

I cannot argue with them. I’m a disreputable relic of a dishonourable profession spiralling towards its inevitable, ignominious death. No one reads newspapers any more and no one watches television news. People get their information and form their world views in different ways.

Influencers tell us what to wear, what to listen to and what to buy, and bloggers with deep-pocketed sponsors and warped world perspectives instruct us on the big issues of the day and what we should think about them.

At least that’s how it works most of the time. Then along comes a war, and journalism – or rather some elite stratum of it that has always been above my pay grade and competence – becomes suddenly and startlingly relevant.

Ukrainian service members fire a shell from an M777 Howitzer at a front line, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues. Photo: Reuters

There are no pouting social media starlets flying out to the Donbas to post swimwear selfies from the frontline (more’s the pity). And the keyboard warriors bashing out unhinged conspiracy theories are tucked away behind the bedroom curtains of their parents’ homes.

They can froth and rage from thousands of miles away, but any journalist will tell you that you only know when you go. And fortunately for the rest of us, some of the world’s best war correspondents have had the verve to fly out to Ukraine and find out what’s going on.

Ukrainian journalists walk in the yard of a university building destroyed by a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka

It isn’t remotely safe and you wouldn’t catch me anywhere near the place. But proper reporters have filed a stream of compelling and profoundly moving testimony about a conflict that has unleashed barbarity on a scale we believed belonged to a previous century.

Watching, listening to and reading those journalists won’t necessarily change your view about whether the horrors are the fault of Russia, the United States, Nato, or a shadowy cabal of global paedophiles. But it does at least allow you to base your opinions on reality.

It’s a reality denied to the people of Russia, who haven’t even been told there’s a war on (it’s still a “special operation” until presumably it becomes a final solution), and a reality hidden from growing numbers of people in places where journalism is criminalised and news is replaced by government-doctored narratives.

02:11

Award-winning US journalist and filmmaker Brent Renaud killed in Ukraine

In a world increasingly projected through cynically distorted filters, the blood-soaked tragedy of Ukraine demonstrates why good journalists still matter. They may be a dying breed, but they speak truth to power when lives and freedoms are crushed. We ignore and silence them at our peril.