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I asked myself today "What 3 core traits distinguish a real journalist from a corporate PR cowboy?". This list can be expanded of course: 1 - A real journalist does not see himself/herself as being above the public, separate from the public, or in a class superior to the public. A real journalist will see him/herself as a member of the greater public and will try hard to stay in touch with regular members of the public rather than writing stupid fairy tales from a glitzy press office while having essentially no contact with the "lower classes". 2 - A real journalist is professionally paranoid about power and authority, about what any new development may mean for the future of the greater public, will always question decisions handed down from the top, and will not dismiss, ignore or gloss over new developments, nor ever adopt a "lets wait and see" attitude on new developments. To give a practical example, a real journalist will neither ignore the negative aspects of a development like all-digital cash/CDBCs, nor gloss over the fact that the formulas for various Covid vaccines still have not been made public, nor dismiss perfectly plausible conspiracy theories as "crazy talk from the internet". He or she will instead thoroughly investigate any and all leads of this nature. 3 - A real journalist will criticize POWER rather than the weaker PUBLIC, will ask tough questions no matter who is sitting in the opposite chair, will dig deep into scandals and murky behaviour, and will never fawn over powerful figures like Billionaires or Heads of State. If you see a journalist sucking up to powerful people and companies, criticizing the public rather than people who cause problems for the public, and dismissing real issues being discussed among the public as "baseless doom and gloom nobody should really worry about", that is a journalist in name only. Comments or crits welcome.