I saw these numbers and it made me think about how true they are in my own experience. Three years ago, I recall listening to my Afghanistan source's team die on the phone, group at a time, until there were none left, and I knew that the world and the stakes were changing. My tiny space in it was changing, and the demand for my accountability to the human experience was so much higher than I previously understood.
It's true that media is going to have to be broken down and rebuilt to meet the challenge of this new world. Journalists are going to have to do better, be better.
In total honesty, the future does not inspire hope in me. For my part, the last four years of human events have been impossibly dark. Rather, the prospects of these numbers motivate in me a resolve. There are only two things I know. The world is changing, and I will continue to seek the truth, even if I don't perfect the art of finding it. Only one thing can I guarantee: I am going to try.
One thing I have to ask from my network is accountability. We are both seeking truth in an impossible situation. New media will need a new audience, one that is constantly keeping us accountable and engages with us 1-0-1. For that to happen, don't give up on us just yet, while those of us who are trying to do the renovation are working. There's a lot to rebuild from what we've had in the recent past.
We may not all look like you expect. We might not have massive followings, or come with the highest accolades and academic endorsements. But if we follow the standards and ethics that have guided our craft, and can produce legitimate achievements, then allow us to practice. For this work, extend grace to independents lacking perhaps in brand and favor, if you can.
I have to ask you what I asked my friend and his dying team during those dark days when the American mission to Afghanistan ended:
Stay on the line with me.
As long as you can.
Because if you stay on the line, then it gives me more courage to stay on the line.
This process might be harrowing. You may hate the things I present to you sometimes, and you may come to hate me some. You have your right to opinions, criticisms and any other objection to what I do next. There may come days when the journalist as a person is just torn down to baseboards, but that should not mean throwing out the whole of journalism as a practice itself with the bathwater.
It matters because the story of the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and their experience as they were murdered in a dark and scary place where no one could help them mattered. Their pain and their fear, and good humor and quiet faith mattered. They stayed together, on the line, as long as they could. And it meant something that at the end of them, they left the imprint of their humanity.
If you and I keep the channel open, the static might break, and the signal come through. It could be that if we work together to seek the truth, we will find it.
#independentmedia #worldpolitics
Armed conflicts are at the highest rate now since 1946. In addition, the past three years were the most violent in the last three decades.
New forms of media will be required to consume this new world order.
https://lnkd.in/gbcHNTAJ.
