Ethics tangent

This ethics tangent is completely unprovoked, there is no agenda to my discussion. I guess it's just good to remind yourself why you do what you do. This is why I do what I do, even if it's on a very small scale right now.

I really like to believe in the power of the media, and I really like to believe that they make a difference. And I really like to believe that I too, will one day make a difference. Maybe not by being a Pulitzer Prize-winning whistle-blower, but by being the writer who told that story right, true. It might not be a lot, but it's something.

I really like to believe that everyone is as idealistic as I am. And even I am not so naive as to think that THAT is true. But if the idealism of one can be a spark that lights the flames of many, who's to say we can't ignite the hearts of all by finding the truth? That has to be worth something.

I really like to believe that everyone who goes into journalism is doing it for the noblest of reasons: pursuit of passion, truth telling, passively advocating for humanity by recording our triumphs, our failures, and standing up for justice when something goes awry, even if we can only scream objectively and hope that someone can read our subtext, and know that something is wrong and desperately needs fixing. After all, journalism by its very nature is not a career of activism. It's a career of quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) observing the comings and goings of our fellow man, and at the end of the day, knowing that something you said has given someone else a new context in which to think about the world. And that is definitely something.