No longer is it confined to familiar entities such as governments and corporate boardrooms. For journalists, these changes demand that they find where power resides, watch those who wield it, and report regularly on abuses and shortcomings, no matter how disillusioning the results. For in the long run, quality journalism, no matter what it turns up, evokes the opposite of disillusionment. Everybody knows that power corrupts. Yet as the watchdog conferees explored, power corrupts more than merely those who possess it.
Power corrupts both the powerful and the powerless.
Both emotions distort and corrode a free society. The journalist must serve as, in effect, the biographer of power, discovering the secrets of its birth, tracing its growth, revealing its influence. Where power is, that is where the watchdog journalist should go as well, with a careful eye and a busy pencil. Go to top of this page.