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Why Journalism Still Matters
by Michael Schudson
(Polity, £15.99)
MICHAEL SCHUDSON is a professor at the Columbia School for Journalism and his book is very much a reflection of a US-oriented discourse.
He argues that journalism is essential for a functioning democracy — undoubtedly true in principle — and sees “professional” journalists as akin to medical practitioners who take the Hippocratic oath. They are individuals with a higher calling, somehow apart from the general public in pursuing unadorned truth and disavowing their own prejudices in that pursuit.
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