Any hacks on here?

[Orior]

In recent weeks and months there has been various people hounded out of jobs for minor indiscretions. These people were doing an honest days work, and they were doing it well. But the great British public's thirst for seedy stories (or blood) has meant that journalists will do anything, pay anything, set up anything, to dig out the dirt.

Question for any journalists (new or old) on here. Would you sell your soul to devil if it sold more tabloids?

[Mr_love_monkey]

Originally Posted by Orior

Would you sell your soul to devil if it sold more tabloids?

I thought selling it was a job requirement for a lot of then

[bopdude]

Originally Posted by Mr_love_monkey

I thought selling it was a job requirement for a lot of then

Thats funny, I thought 'lack of' was a condition for interview's it does make my blood boil, the length's some will go to for a story, even if it's only half true
I gave up on tabloids years ago, waste of time and money.

[Stuart]

Sadly, many journalists, newspapers and news shows are happy to spread this kind of stuff, often instead of real news. I mean, while I don't like him, who John Prescott has slept with (even if he cheated on his wife) has no bearing on how he does his job.

One thing the journalists should look out for. I have said this before, but I remember an interview with Max Clifford, who was talking about the David Mellor/Antonia de Sanchez affair. He said he was hired to leak that story, and he thought it was so that the government could deflect the journalists attention from something else.

While I personally don't like Max Clifford (and am not sure whether to trust him), it does make sense that the government (or another party) would do this.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Orior

In recent weeks and months there has been various people hounded out of jobs for minor indiscretions. These people were doing an honest days work, and they were doing it well. But the great British public's thirst for seedy stories (or blood) has meant that journalists will do anything, pay anything, set up anything, to dig out the dirt.

Question for any journalists (new or old) on here. Would you sell your soul to devil if it sold more tabloids?

Used to be ... only on a regional paper, though. I left that career for a number of reasons, one of them being the chasing of people for stories who didn't want to tell them. At the level I was working, it was no more sinister than trying to get tragic stories from the relatives of those who had come to an unfortunate end one way or another (accidents, diseases, etc), which I found distasteful enough ... but when I realised if I ever wanted to earn a living wage out of the job I would have to move to a bigger paper, with correspondingly nastier assignments, I chucked it in and went and did something else.