7 ‘If it bleeds, it leads’: ethical questions about popular journalism
Cynthia Carter and Stuart Allan
Good journalism is popular culture, but popular culture that stretches and informs its consumers rather than that which appeals to the ever descending lowest common denominator. If, by popular culture, we mean expressions of thought or feeling that require no work of those who consume them, then decent popular journalism is finished. What is happening today, unfortunately, is that the lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives – has overrun real journalism (Carl Bernstein, US journalist).
I believe that writing for a mass audience ...
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