"No professional morality in journalism"

Cherie Blair is being brutally honest:

Cherie Blair has launched an extraordinary attack on the media claiming there is "no professional morality in journalism".

The Prime Minister's wife took her revenge on a profession that has bedevilled her for years when invited to address students at Roehampton University on Wednesday.

She told a stunned audience that it was "not a noble calling" and journalists "have no ethics". Then, Mrs Blair - who was at the university in south-west London to open its Human Rights Centre - turned her attention to the Daily Mail and the Press Complaints Commission.

Since the latter has repeatedly failed to uphold the Blairs' complaints about the former, Mrs Blair's words - "the pathetic PCC dominated by the Daily Mail - are not, perhaps, surprising.

Some intriguing candidness from the Prime Minister's wife, sure to set some teeth on edge in the world's press, after all, journalists are religionists in their own right. 

Jay Rosen, in this piece, makes the case:

There is a high church in journalism, with high ceremonies, like the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize, joining the panel on “Meet the Press,” having a dart thrown at you by the Columbia Journalism Review. One could teach a course about it. Bill Moyers once said this while moderating an event at Columbia: “I think of CJR and the J-School as sort of the ‘high church’ of our craft, reminding us of the better angels of our nature and the demons, powers and principalities of power against which journalism is always wrestling.”

The better angels. Journalism needs those. In this sense, it might be said to need a religion. For how else are angels called?

He goes on to write 5,000 more words buttressing his assertion that "Journalism is itself a religion", a religion that Cherie Blair has blasphemed. 

She will, in the days to come, be subject to this religion's wrathful devotees. 

Count on it.

Comments

[dougf]

--She told a stunned audience that it was "not a noble calling" and journalists "have no ethics"..---

No!!!

However could she have said such a thing about the noble 4th Estate ? A collection of moral midgets, hypocrites, and purveyors of public misery. Cutting to the chase, all that anyone needs to understand about the 'Media' can be derived by viewing the 'Front Page' or any of its multiple remakes, or by watching the sharks, oops, I mean 'reporters', group around a hapless victim whenever 'blood' is scented in the public arena.

An unpleasant self-absorbed collection of cynical poltroons with a completely undeserved delusion of grandeur seemingly permanently attached.

What a marvelous comment by Mrs. Blair. I don't even care if it was merely selfish personal payback for past affronts.

Marvellous Cheri, --- marvellous.

More please --- much much more.

[Tim Chesterton]

Rick, the New Testament scholar NT Wright has many times explained to students the modern day equivalent of the Pharisees. He says (words to this effect): 'There is a group of people in modern times who see themselves as the self-appointed guardians of public morality. They dog the footsteps of leaders, politicians, priests, rock stars and so on, watching closely for the smallest hint of imperfection, which they then gleefully point out in great detail to millions of readers. Thier own personal morality, of course, never has to face such scrutiny. These are the modern-day Pharisees. Who are they? Journalists, of course!'

[Davod]

Let's be honest about this. Cherie is upset because they have targeted her. I have no doubt that Cherie has used the press more often than they have attacked her.

[Zossima]

Hey, Tim, I thought that was the Republicans, no strangers to scandals themselves these days. ; )

Could you provide a link to N.T. Wright saying that?

[Tim Chesterton]

Zos, it's in several of his books - both his little NT commentaries and also, I think, 'Jesus and the Victory of God'. The books are all down at the office, and I'm at home - sorry!

[Zossima]

No worry. I was just curious. I have dabbled in Wright and respect and like what I've read, which includes a few chapters in Jesus and the Victory of God. I think he is a needed challenge to those who want to reduce salvation to merely substitutionary atonement.