Was talking to a journalist from Turkey and he said some stuff that made me rethink the whole 'free press' idea

2 comments

2 Comments

Yeah but you gotta understand where he's coming from... journalists in Turkey deal with a whole different set of pressures than we do here. The government there has jailed reporters and shut down newspapers just for asking tough questions. So when he talks about "free press" he probably means something way more limited than what we take for granted. It's easy to sit in a country where the press can actually criticize the government and act like it's perfect everywhere. But the reality is that even in countries with strong protections, money and corporate interests twist what gets reported. So maybe he was just being honest about how messy the whole thing really is.

felix15518h ago

That's a fair point, @barbara278. So the question I keep coming back to is: at what point does "messy" just become an excuse for not trying harder? If a country's press is that compromised, is the honest move to admit it and work within the cracks, or pack up and go somewhere it's actually free?