Messenger

My subject today is inspired from a comment from one of my valued readers.

She was replying to my post on integrity and said that we don't see much of it around, especially in the main-stream press and media.

Having been a journalist, I know how much we got blamed for. Often people didn't realise we were only the messenger, relaying what we were told, rather than creating what we wrote. However, in saying that, we had a job to do and many times that was exactly what we were doing - our job. It wasn't always pleasant phoning someone who didn't want to talk to us, for comments on a story that was in the public interest and one the public wanted to hear. Sometimes, we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't.

I remember my joy, when I was no longer a journalist. I had set up a portable massage chair on New Plymouth's walkway. That was incidentally, how I started my massage business. People had a five-minute back rub and would come back to my clinic for a longer massage. Before long, I was so busy, that I no longer needed to sit in the hot sun trying to generate clients.

This particular day, there was excitement in the city, as Cliff Richard would be performing that evening at The Bowl of Brooklands.

I couldn't believe my eyes as this famous musician strolled past me. The journalist-me would have immediately felt an obligation to grab a photo or phone the reporters for a story for the next day's paper but the newly ex-journalist-me thought, let the poor man have some peace. Let him enjoy this beautiful walkway without the interference of pesky photographers and reporters. That was incredibly satisfying for me to be able to use my integrity in such a situation.

A few weeks later, a man stopped for a massage and we got talking. He was a journalist, visiting form the South Island, I think. He had his own magazine and wanted to include me in a piece he was doing on New Plymouth. I recounted the story about Cliff Richard and how satisfying it was for me to let him be, now that I was no longer a journalist. We talked about integrity. I was pleasantly surprised to read his next edition and found he'd ceased correspondence on a subject where a person's private life had been taking a grilling. He was also exercising his integrity and realised, yes, the public wanted this, but this man had had enough.

I know some of the tabloid media one reads about can be pretty underhand, but the majority of the people I worked with at the paper were pretty decent people. I know people will continue to blame the papers for all the negativity in the world but remember, often the reporters are only relaying what is told to them. They are merely messengers, doing their job.