Criticism
The concept of watchdog journalism is not free of criticism. The whole field of watchdog journalism has decreased over time and parts of journalism observers affirm that this period "is not a time of rich watchdog reporting in any media". This comes with the framework and the problem that many journalists tend "towards reflecting the status quo, rather than radically challenging it". This decrease, however, cannot lead to the presumption that there are not enough critical topics to write or report about. In fact, the opposite is the case and there is enough material to work with. While watchdog journalism in the US helped to force Nixon out of office in 1974, the situation presented itself differently in 2003. During the Iraq war part of the established media turned out to take more of a "pro-war attitude", without fully fulfilling their function of a critical watchdog. Many professionals in the media "appeared to feel that it was not their role to challenge the administration". However, critics direct the blame in party to the general public itself, since their interest in watchdog journalism is "inconstant and fleeting at times". They also see the role of watchdog journalism as "driven by its own interests rather than by a desire to protect the public interest".
Read more about this topic: Watchdog Journalism
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)