EPO People Power - Part XI - The Media in Europe is Ill and Complicit in Ills
Also see: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X
This past week we wrote a great deal about the EPO and released information that we had held for a while. We kept it for more strategic times/timing.
Meanwhile, I must report with sadness that all the journalists I spoke to (or spoke to me, some initiated the contact) failed to report on EPO affairs. It certainly sounded like they wanted to, but something or someone was getting in their way.
This isn't an outlandish narrative; I heard it firsthand even more than a decade ago. EPO officials loyal to "the king" kept bullying writers, sometimes via their bosses (editors/publishers).
We must all recognise that there's a problem here, and it's not limited to the EPO. We also have a media problem. By refusing or failing to report particular things it enables these things to go on, even spread.
What saddens me the most is that then - sometimes - that very same media tries to shame those who dare do what it (itself!) was meant to do. We saw lots of that with Wikileaks; the media was so busy bashing Assange (the founder), it didn't pay attention to what his site had published! █