Journalism Shmournalism

"I eat pussy to stay alive" screamed 15 July's Daily Voice front page. With the strap line: "These hungry Flats mense will kill, cook and chow your pets."

Tasteless, nè?

What I found interesting though was the fact that all the people who complained about the header – and there were quite a number of them – weren't necessarily horrified by the desperate poverty this headline implied. Or by the more than vaguely disturbing idea of people dining on your darling Fluffy. Or even the slightly sexy yet totally gross vampiric image brought to mind by the idea of someone eating cunt to stay alive.

Noooo. What bothered the esteemed non-readers of the Daily Voice was that a headline like that was journalism taken a step too far. That the Daily Voice used such a crass, unsavoury pun to sell their crass, unsavoury newspaper.

Now as someone dabbling in journalism I was of course highly offended by the headline. Because journalism is a fine and noble profession dammit. Proper journos don’t use disgusting wordplay to whore to the masses. Proper journos don’t cater to humankind’s baser instincts. Proper journos would never stoop to such sensationalist reporting.

And that, dear friends, is why proper journos are a dying breed. Because people want what they want.

Look at the internet – the biggest information system ever dreamt of and what drove it to become as organised and widely used as it is today? Porn. If you don’t believe me don't bother to comment, just look it up. If you can tear yourself away from hornyhousewives.com, that is.

Long gone is the time when we could prescribe what people should read or not. And know or not. Because the interweb machine is a great equalizer. People are no longer interested in some Rhodes grad giving their objective version of a story.

Because, and say after me: there is no such thing as objectivity. Every single person reads from their – often, totally nuts – perspective. You only have to look at some of the reader comments articles get to see that people are unable of reading anything objectively.

So then, why bother to report anything objectively?

In England (and many other countries I'm sure) they've had subjective newspapers for decades, if not centuries. From the ridiculously conservative to the limp wristed liberal to the unashamedly left wing "the masses" knew every paper's agenda. And were free to choose what they wanted to read.

These days South Africans can also choose to read tabloids with inciting headlines and page 3 nudity. And you can either lament this "dumbing-down" of our nation’s so called intellect, or you can jump on the bandwagon.

Well I know what I'm gonna do. Which is why I'm going to call this column, "I love my pussy". Just kidding.