Am văzut recent Starsuckers, un documentar tare bun despre cum a otrăvit presa tabloidă jurnalismul, profitând de obsesia publicul pentru faimă şi vedete. „When the media makes a star… you get made the sucker” e sloganul filmului şi nu mai are nevoie de nici o traducere. În acest documentar am descoperit vocea unui jurnalist foarte deştept, Nick Davies, fost jurnalist al anului în Anglia, care denunţă practicile infecte ale presei tabloide. Iată câteva idei pe care le-am transcris şi care veţi vedea că sunt dureros de valabile şi în cazul presei sportive româneşti:
Despre „asta vrea publicul”:
Whenever newspapers are challenged about these kinds of stories they say they’re only giving the public what they want. Well that might be… You could justify throwing Christians to lions in Rome that way, couldn’t you? But that doesn’t mean it’s good and it certainly doesn’t make it legal.
Despre degradarea meseriei de reporter:
The big corporations who’ve taken over the media outlets on the whole have cut editorial staffing levels and at the same time they’ve increased our outputs, and got masses of supplements and newspapers.And that quite simply reduces the time that we have to do our job in. And if you take away the time from reporters you’re taking away they’re most important working asset.
So by and large, most reporters, most of the time, no longer go out and find stories, make contacts or even check facts.
Despre unicul scop al presei tabloide:
It ceases to matter to these people, big media organizations, whether it’s true, whther it’s legal, whether it’s right, whether it’s important. It’s just a story. They’re not in the business of telling the truth. Big media organizations are in the business of being in a business, making money.
Despre degradarea stirilor (din perspectiva celor care le produc):
Your need to have this kind of information, combined with our ability to sell it to you, has created a demand for infinite content. Not too long ago there were enough journalists around to verify their stories before they were printed. As news operations became streamlined, checking facts and sourcing leads became a luxury they could no longer afford. This irreversably changed the type of news they had time to write about.