Finally - some debate about truth and facts

There is a long overdue debate going on – at Peter Martins blog site – about what journalists should and shouldn’t say about the information that they come across during their day to day reporting activities.

On the one hand we have politicians, their "spin meisters" and others who want to control the information flow - who argue that it is not wise to provide information to the general public because they can’t handle it.

This is the typical "we know best" argument that has been practiced at length across the world and particularly in Australia over the past decade by "insiders" who think that a full and frank disclosure will "scare the horses" and somehow lead to *chaos*.

Essentially their argument is that the general public are far too unsophisticated to *know the truth*. And that what they don’t know won’t hurt them. It has been practiced with varying degrees of success by our political leaders for decades.

Mike Rann is probably the current world champion practitioner – closely followed by Rupert’s "The Advertiser".

On the other hand we have quality journalists like Peter – who take the view that the public should know the *truth* and the *facts* - because they are smart enough to work out for themselves what is important.

Essentially this argument runs along the lines that the job of the journalist is to tell it like it is and to refrain from inserting his – or anyone else’s – bias into the story. This is about being a *reporter* as opposed to an *opinionater*.

There is another – and just as important consideration – and that is about negating the advantage that the *insider* has with information that has not yet been provided to the general public. We have all seen how these people can "make hay while the sun shines" at the expense of the rest of us – particularly with share values and house prices – and my view is that it’s a much better thing if we can somehow work to *level the playing field* by letting everybody have access to the same information.