Across the pond

Is an article in Thursday’s Guardian Simon Jenkins asserts that journalists are born not made. His evidence is from his own personal experience. Simon Jenkins makes his living from journalism. Therefore he is a journalist. In his own estimation.

He is paid for voicing his opinions in several media, as well as The Guardian, so he thinks that what he does is journalism.

But writing colums as Jenkins does is not journalism. But merely a part of journalism. What Jenkins writes is mostly worth reading, because he voices his own personal opinions, which are derirved from a serious analysis of today’s problems.

Which is his forte.

But that is not journalism.

At which Jenkins was a miserable failure, as the editor of the Evening Standard and as the editor of The Times.

His columns, deriving from his own personal view of the world, are frequently illuminating. And thank God that the mainstream newspapers (The Sunday Times as well as The Guardian and the BBC) are stil prepared to pay him to write them.

But journalism is about reporting the facts, not telling people what the journalist thinks about the facts.

Simon Jenkins was born not made.

But journalistis need to be made. They need to learn that their job is not to tell the world what to do. But to report what is actually happening.