"It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell" - Wilbur F. Storey

We were shown that quote in our Reporting For Print class today. It was in a Youtube video shown by a lecturer to his students, if i'm not mistaken, about journalism ethics and what content should or should not be fit to publish.

The video opened all our eyes today. We left our class, thoughtful and depressed, but most importantly, we were aware.

Newspapers today in some countries are being used and abused by political parties to spread their prowess and influence, manipulating the truth, going against what newspapers were originally there for: to spread news, and the truth. Journalists who stick to these beliefs are being locked up and thrown into prison to be silenced. Where is the fairness in this?

Does anyone remember a picture of a man who threw himself off the World Trade Center towers in New York on 9/11 and he was photographed midair before the towers came crashing down? Or a Pullitzer-prize winning picture of a baby boy, emaciated and dying, with a vulture behind him, waiting to devour him? Or maybe pictures of dead Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb victims, their mangled, destroyed faces smiling garishly up into the camera lens?

Do these pictures deserve to be published on our newspapers? Or should they be forever hidden from the public, their voices not heard, because they would, God forbid, offend people?

Publish these pictures, I say, and let the rest of the world experience what we experienced today. Publish them, and let their voices be heard.

Be aware.

Watch the video here.