Ah, so you were a journalist: the deceit of spin

This is not a blanket condemnation of modern journalism. In more than half a century in the game, I have seen a continual improvement in the quality of investigative journalism. And, more and more, journalists worldwide are risking life and limb to get to the truth. Yet when their reliably documented reports exposing calumnies by government and business are served up to the public, almost nothing happens. More likely, the response is a shrugged “So what!” Only occasionally is the public response forceful enough to make a political miscreant (usually a minion) bite the dust. And even when the buck does happen to stop at the top, and causes a big head to be lopped, the scum frequently floats back to the surface, sometimes in as little as a couple of years.

This is an old sub-editor writing, so my next point might well be taken as seriously sour grapes. In the past 15 years or so, economic rationalist managements - and their new brand of editors - have, it seems, done their best to marginalise sub-editors by shifting them out of “journalism” and into “production”.

A few years back, a young staff member asked me what I did.

“I am a sub-editor. What do you do?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“We’re all journalists,” I said gently, indicating that my interest was in knowing exactly what role this “journalist” had.

My message was not getting across.

So I mentioned that I had been a reporter and writer for many years.

Brightly came the dawning: “Oh, so you were a journalist.”

Loss of objectivity certainly has something to do with the lack of experience on sub-editorial desks today. On my first newspaper in England, the average age of the subs’ desk was well into the 50s (one sub, the font of all wisdom to us youngsters, was in his mid-70s).

As mid-20th century cadet journalists, we all knew that, one day, we might be competent enough to be a political or foreign correspondent, a feature writer, even an editor. But we were not sure if we would ever be experienced and skilled enough to earn a permanent seat on a sub-editors’ desk, the place where newspapers are finally sculpted for public consumption.

Few cadet journalists now aspire to a seat on the subs’ desk - or even think about the possibility of ending up in this last line of defence against authors’ inadequacies.