Journalism vs Activism

The terms of journalism and activism have always been hand in hand through out the history of a country and are as such an active part of our society presently. Though vastly different in their objective definition, one can not do without the other. Activism brings about intentional action to bring about political, economical, environmental or cultural change and journalism investigates and reports issues, events and trends to a broad audience. Hence the success of an activist depends on the fact that how many people around the world are aware of their actions.

Although journalism, ideally, should tend to inform the citizenry of what is happening around them but now-a-days it is tinted with personal views and subjectivity. Activism is not necessarily done on a large scale that is intended to bring about world wide change but can also be a simple initiative taken by somebody to cause a ripple of change or awareness in an otherwise ignorant society.

The role of journalism is to act as a medium between public and policy making establishments. Albiet one can account for the freedom of speech to the appearance of personal views in journalism but the fact remains that only the real truth should be told so that the public does not get affected by negative or harassing comments. In today's world activism is slowly dying a slow death for in reality how many of us have heard of a person taking the effort to bring about even the minutest of change for the betterment of fellow human beings.

Typically activism maintains that people need to transform from the inside as well as on the outside to bring about any meaningful change in the world. Journalism’s main obligation is to tell the truth and relate it to the public as it is without adding or subtracting any fact even if it is for the benefit of the people.
So even they are vastly different terms and have such a different representation, they are still somehow connected and dependent upon each other. What activists do needs to be delivered to thw world and that is the job of journalism.

Regards,
Fatima Sayani