Why do all the silly bloggers and citizens want to be journalists when they say they hate us?

Today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls I changed the starboard left-erly blowy-up round thing at the front of my stately Bentley (by any other name a Chrysler 300C with a posh grill).

I did it in the elegantly leaf-blown driveway to my stately home (well, actually it was in a lay-by on the rainy wagon-rattled A5 which pollutes Weston-under-Lizard in Shropshire… but you could see Weston Hall in the distance and I did once know Lord Bradford who actually lived there).

So, tomorrow everybody I will announce my new career as an experienced mechanic on upmarket vehicles with a specialism in Bentley blowy-up round things.

Oh, and just to keep you up-to-date – a couple of days ago I cut my finger on the jagged edge of a can of tuna as I prepared a salad.

And after running my damaged digit under a tap which I turned on all by myself (I am considering a new career in chef-ery and plumbing as I write) …but I digress.

So, after almost emptying one arm down the sink as I flushed and flushed the gaping wound, I dried my damaged digit and applied a plaster!

This was all done with professionalism and aplomb (amid the tears and howls) might I add.

So, tomorrow too I will be announcing my new career as a doctor!

(Actually, I think I will keep my burgeoning careers in chef-ery and plumbing on hold for when I have more time to join social media and pretend to be something I’m not).

And just like them, I will tell the world all about my new careers on places like LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Reddit and … and I can become famous in my own lunchbox as I take a break from my day job as a bus driver or from signing on or in-between those zero-hours contracts!

I am so happy. And successful. And powerful! See! My Facebook profile tells the world!

My point is, it actually isn’t a crime to claim to be something you’re not – unless of course as a bus driver from Barnstaple you start carrying out open heart surgery on your kitchen table while the missus is down the gym.

(Actually, as a new specialist pink flesh mechanic you could go-ahead and remove the brain from somebody’s pride and joy by using keyhole surgery up its exhaust – but you could end up facing civil court action for turning a £240,000 Bentley into a perambulatory moron!)

Social media has done many good things over the years and in some small ways it has fulfilled its promise to bring together communities across the world and give the common man a voice and a platform for his dreams, his ambitions, his conscience, sometimes his vitriol and bile. But very often for his fantasy world.

His Walter Mitty world of self-engrandesment. Fallacious fame based on the nob-head notion that you can become famous by fantasy because nobody will ever know really who you are anyway!

In today’s social media world though, there is a frustrating and baffling battle – social media, more than anywhere, is a place where the Press meets the People and gets a battering.

The reputation of bona-fide trained and experienced journalists – like what I am – has never been so low.

Not, in reality, because of the actions of the journalists themselves on the whole, but more to do with the tub-thumping, look-at-me! look-at-me! pretend punditry of those who rant because they can’t write!

As a professional, experienced, trained and working journalists I simply find it appalling how many people glibly decide to call themselves journalists – why? Why? Why?

After all, all us real journalists are Tory-boy liars, cheats and self-promotionalists according to the world you live in …

So, why do you want to be part of us?

Is it because you want to clean up our act? How can you do that when you don’t have the vaguest inkling of what we do?

Only today I was talking to a woman from a far-flung enclave of the Land of Fake News and initially I took her at face value. She said she was an investigative journalist with a focus on the environment and social issues, had worked for major networks and been at the forefront of frontline horror scenarios.

But the issue became confused when we started to chat about story collaboration, story sharing, copyright and licensing.

She became very animated, called me a bully and blocked me …

Another chap a few days before chatted with me about writing for the Preservation Society and blithely told me he could do anything I could do and do it better. The problem was he couldn’t even spell the word journalism, obviously couldn’t edit because he never corrected his mis-spelling, obviously couldn’t interview because he filled his site with news from bona-fide news outlets and obviously doesn’t have the tenacity to be a journalist at all as he never got round to doing the two interviews he promised to do for me.

And then there is the nincompoop ‘newsman’ from the North’s Never Never Land who claims to have an extensive background in medical matters – wait for it, wait for it … because he once chatted with one or two doctorly types in a newsroom environment decades ago!

I could go on and on about the wanna-be-but-not-quites I keep bumping into on the electric avenues of the cyber world. But instead, let’s look at the demarcation in the weird and wacky world of being a writer and storyteller (for in reality that is what a journalist is):

1. If you write an email then you are an emailer
2. If you write a blog, then you are a blogger
3. If you share news about your local area on the internet, you might be considered a citizen journalist. That means in fact you are a blogger with an over-blown title
4. If you write a book you are a writer
5. If you write for a news outlet – terrestrial or cyber world – you are probably a reporter
6. If you investigate corruption in its many forms you are almost certainly an investigative reporter
7. If you edit the work of other writers, then you are an editor or more likely, a sub-editor
8. If you control the content of a news outlet then you are a news editor
9. If you define the content and direction of a news outlet then you are an Editor or an Editor in Chief
10. If you do all of the above – and you design pages, manipulate images, write headlines and lecture on your chosen vocation, if you are invited regularly on to radio and television to share your views, then you are what is known as an all-round journalist.

And that’s me! I do all those things for a living!

And I’m proud of what I do and what I have achieved, I was instrumental in getting the Kite Mark on UK furniture, I hunted Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith and Stuart Hall, I exposed perverts within the education system, got a Bill brought before Parliament over Britain’s roads, campaign for victims of parental alienation, I am working on rescuing a village and am about to expose the iniquities of a public institution.

So, I say to all you wannabe Clark Kents and Lois Lanes start telling THE TRUTH – and shove your badly spelt, bile-dripping inarticulate blogs where The Sun will never shine!

#journalists #journalism #fakenews #citizenjournalists #bloggers #selfpublishers #vanitypress #fakenews