An Honest Version of Events

Supporting the School of Authentic Journalism, You Get Access to the Realities on the Ground

By Manasi Golapkrishnan
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010

December 1, 2009

I am not what you would call a discerning shopper. I get carried away by advertisements and displays, colours and more often that not, by the ability of a salesperson to convince me that the tube of moisturizer is probably the best beauty secret ever invented and if I don’t pay a million Euros and start using it this very moment I would end up with horrible wrinkles under my eyes and no one would love me.

Manasi Golapkrishnan

So let me ask you, do you believe everything people tell you, everything that makes its rounds in the media, in the billboards, on TV and in the right hand corner of your computer screen when you get into the Internet? I do, at least I did, until some time back. And this is where authentic journalism becomes so important. It is important because some intelligent people have realized that journalism is not all that authentic as it is meant to be, by definition that is. So we need to coin a new phrase to differentiate it from journalism at large.

You might think that using a silly moisturizer example to prove my point about something like authentic journalism is not a very good idea. But honestly, how many women have been forced to believe that starving yourselves is good for you, to the extent that entire countries worry about the mental health of their female population? And if you, like me get so convinced by advertisements for toilet paper and laundry baskets, where is the guarantee that you will not be convinced about so-called facts appearing in newspapers on the war in Afghanistan or about Iran’s nuclear power or Saddam Hussein’s atomic weapons that haven’t been found until now?

Like me, there are many journalists who need to make a choice between what is good and what is profitable. A lot of us manage even at the cost of our jobs, but many of us choose to stay within our comfort zones and write what gets us money. And our corporations pay us well for writing what they think because some one is paying them, or controlling them, or profiting from them otherwise. This is how news gets distorted and becomes something totally unrecognizable; what should make news doesn’t even become public in the first place, whereas some other events become a success even before they begin, simply because the media has decided or been told to hype something which will bring them profits. And as readers, you get the news at your table or your desktop PC or your laptops.

So what would you choose? Would you prefer paying for corporations which decide what the day’s news is going to be, or would you like to know what is really going on and what the realities on the ground are? Would you like to stand up for authentic journalism solely for the purpose of providing you with honest reports on events?

And finally, coming back to my tube of moisturizer, I realised some time back that my Grandma had the deepest wrinkles around her eyes. She’d never used any moisturizer all her life, but she was beautiful and we all loved her. Like the writer Andre Gide says, it is better to believe those who are seeking the truth rather than those who claim to have found it. I believe, as an authentic journalist, I would never claim to know the truth about an event from all its aspects. After all, we are bound by our own way of seeing things. But at the end of the day, by financially supporting the School of Authentic Journalism you would have an honest version of events.

Donate today, online, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA

Thank you,

Manasi Gopalakrishnan
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010
Berlin, Germany

Please support Manasi’s scholarship via this link:

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

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