I have refocussed my daily newsletter, which hasn’t been daily in quite a while now anyway, to concentrate more on what I seem to be spending most of my time doing: analysing and criticising the press and its reporting of the news. To better reflect what the publication is about, I’ve also rebranded it to Eye on The Press.

→ “The Sleepy Fox” Is Now “Eye on The Press”

When I became a journalist over a decade ago, I did so because I love writing and because I thought I could do a better job at it than most of the people I saw covering the news at the time. A lot has changed since then. And not for the better. Journalists of all creeds and colours have become obsessed with writing about what should be, instead of what is.

The press is enormously powerful. In many ways, what becomes recorded history is not what actually happened, but what was reported to have happened. Journalists shape not only the opinions of society, in the information age, they shape reality itself. Like everyone else, politicians and leaders get their view of what happens around them from the media. If the press is convinced that a problem exists, or that something that is happening is a danger to society, sooner rather than later, so will everyone else. Including the ones who have to power to do something about it — as misguided as that may be.

That is why I think it is only prudent that someone should watch what the press is up to. And report on it. This publication exists to, in my small way, do my part in this. I might not see everything and I might not have enough time to cover all the things I do see, but I feel it is very important to at least try. And as someone who has had intimate experience in the trenches of daily news journalism, I at least know how the game is played and what irregularities to watch for.