Does journalism make a difference?

I read an interesting article from the New Statesman about journalism and whether it makes a difference - especially to international situations in Darfur and Zimbabwe etc. Are journalists just content providers? Do readers really care about what they read? And why do people think the media is powerful when they are not?

Here's an extract from the article. Click on more to view it all.

When journalism is powerless

Brian Cathcart

Published 02 April 2007

Despite years of fine reporting and many furious editorials, the bloodshed continues in Darfur and Mugabe hangs on in Zimbabwe.

Sixth-formers who apply to study journalism at university often explain their interest by referring to the power of the news media, saying something like: "Journalism shapes the world in which we live." It is a sort of commonplace in an age when ministers live and die by headlines, and no doubt there is truth in it, in the philosophical sense that journalists have a role in defining perceptions of the world, but it always jars with me. That is just not my experience.

In day-to-day terms, much of the job is a desperate struggle to interest the readers and give them what they want for their money - not an endeavour that leaves you with an overwhelming feeling of power. And when it comes to the things that really matter, I suspect that most journalists are conscious of how little difference they make, rather than how much.

Darfur is a case in point. How many times have you read that 200,000 people have been killed and two million more displaced in a vicious campaign, backed by the Khartoum government, against the people of western Sudan? Every time you have read it, some journalist has had to write it, struggling to find a new way to communicate the horror behind a message growing staler by the month. And whether those journalists were reporting from the field or sitting at desks in London, they were probably hoping, however faintly, that this time something would change. ... more