When I tell people that I’m studying journalism, I often find that the response is a sucking in of breath, followed by the person saying “ooh”. To be honest I’ve always known that there is a certain stigma attached to the profession but it doesn’t bother me.
However, the other day I was talking to a housemate and she told me about how her ex-boyfriend has just lost four of his close friends in a car accident. It’s hard enough to lose one friend, let alone four and all in one go. Also all four of them left girlfriends behind who would undoubtedly be distraught.
However it wasn’t the story of the four boys dying that shocked me the most, although it is terrible. It was what my housemate told me afterwards. Apparently, one of the local newspapers had gone onto one of the girlfriend’s Facebook pages and taken quotes from what she had written to her boyfriend, and then put it in the papers.
To find out that your boyfriend has died, the day before Valentines Day and then see your personal message to him spread across the next day’s news must be heartbreaking. So this is why I wonder if journalists are getting worse.
I’ve heard of doing whatever you can to get a story but I think that these journalists went a step too far.
