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Description
[2300AD]
Journalism has become much more sophisticated — imagers are
shoulder-mounted and microphones can be very easily concealed for
either cosmetic or fraudulent purposes. However, the journalist’s
function remains virtually unchanged. Large broadcasting firms and
foundations employ large numbers of journalists to bring in exotic
news from human space.
[Dark Æther]
None.
[Dark Conspiracy] Technically, the country still has a free press.
But most of the national news agencies have fallen prey to the big money
of the big corps. This leaves you to fill the gap. You work for
the street-corner rag that prints all the news that fits. Across
your front pages headlines clamor about the ghost of Elvis and
two-headed babies born on roller coasters. But in between those
stories are others like the one about the ritual murders in Galveston.
That one was the truth, intended to draw fire on the perpetrators, and
apparently it worked because the murders stopped. You wish you
could print nothing but stories like that. But the more sensational ones
serve two purposes: First, they draw buyers, keeping you in
business. Second, they serve as camouflage to screen you from the
revenge of whatever it is out there that's driving the world insane.
As long as your true stories seem accidental, you've got a chance to
survive.
[Space 1889]
The advance of literacy during the Victorian Era, particularly after
the Education Act of 1870, fueled a growth in readership for cheap,
popular literature of all kinds. The older, highly respectable press
exemplified by The Times was joined by a vigorously
Imperialist group of London dailies — The Standard, The
Morning Post, and, especially, by "the embodiment and
mouthpiece of the Imperial idea," The Daily Mail. Weekly
pictorial magazines — The Illustrated London News, The
Graphic, The Black and White Budget — portrayed the
growth of Empire as both a divinely inspired mission and a jolly
lark in the (often rather distant) countryside. Journalists became
celebrities, especially the intrepid war correspondents. Archibald
Forbes rode through enemy territory alone to be first with the news
of the defeat of the Zulus at Ulundi in 1879 and would alternately
predict trouble in the Balkans or the Belgian Coprates, "in the
spring, mark my words." Bennet Burleigh rallied a broken square at
Tamai in the Sudan; his "Desert Warfare," "Conquest of the Red
Planet," and "Khartoum Campaign" were enormously successful. Melton
Prior's impression of the "Last Stand at the Shastapsh Residency"
hung over the mantelpiece in many a suburban parlor. G. W. Stevens,
"the High Priest of Imperialism," never regained his health after a
dose of Parhoon thorn fever and died of typhoid at Ladysmith in
1900. It was the work of these correspondents, whose purple prose
made the myth of Empire so real for the man in the street, to create
a popular enthusiasm for Imperial adventurism.
[Traveller (TNE)]
Most worlds enjoy a nominally free press, but in many places the
news services have fallen prey to big money or big government.
Regardless of the boss, though, there's always a demand for exciting
news and for journalists willing to go where the action is,
regardless of danger.
[Twilight:
2000] None.
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