The Culture of Journalists

“A thinker on the balcony is the patron of truth, a thinker on the road becomes truth’s servant. And what truth needs is not patrons but servants, servants in whose life, thought and action, theory and practice are one, thinkers who think not concepts but things... The man who makes truths for himself on the balcony is a pure impressionist in his thinking and a pure opportunist in his living. The man who has been made by a truth which has met him on the road will be ready to die for the truth that found him.”1

Another week has passed away, another murder has occurred. From the balcony, I see my fellow balconeers—they cannot help noticing, they cannot help chattering. Like all mortal beings, caught in the necessity of their finitude, the event that captures their interest, sets them to work, gives them something to chatter about. Something to muse on, something to reflect on, something to issue oughts and ought nots over.

The road sits underneath them, opposite them; at very least, they are protected from the road by the comfort of the balcony.

All good and perfect things, delivered into the mouth of the journalist, are those things which immediately set the culture of chatter to action at the hands of something beyond their control. “I am not a man! I am dynamite!”, says the radical—and, like dynamite, he longs for his fuse to be lit, something to set him into action; something beyond himself to capture him, twist him, turn him into a chatterer, give him purpose in the form of eye-catching headlines and that terrible gawping desire for bloodshed and broken bones, twist him into a journalist, turn him into the chatterer who produces and reproduces the contagious condition of the culture of chattering by way of a clever turn-of-phrase, an insightful reflection to the applause of those sitting besides him. Nothing is offensive, everything is entertainment; nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted. The journalist is like the jellyfish, given life by that which lies beyond him and forced to feed on the corpse of whatever befalls him by way of the uncaring, capricious turning of the tides around him; some foodstuff or other presents itself and the jellyfish can do no other but feast; some tragedy befalls the neighbour and the individual can do no other put stare in horror; some ...