Monday, October 12th, 2026, 3:09 pm
In Journalism, You Cannot Always “Play Safe”
Filed under: Seeking affirmation through conformism and appeasement means being toothless
ournalism requires courage – sometimes stubbornness – and good journalism “pushes boundaries” (or touches them). The notion of “playing it safe” comes from high-risk disciplines like rock-climbing; the risks are different with ropes and high falls.
Moreover, one tactic to discourage particular reporting or reporting about a particular topic is to paint the reporter as “vlogger” or “blogger” or “social media user” etc. It’s not accidental, as the real intention is to rob people of protections offered to reporters, columnists, commentators and journalists.
I’ve seem all those demonisation tactics over the years. I think I know how to tackle or defuse them.
If you always “play safe”, you probably will never expose the most dangerous people and not achieve anything meaningful. Retaliation is proportional to the magnitude of measurable outcomes.
