Enough with Facebook, get back to work


Even ten years ago, when the first Internet portals and social media emerged, there were journalists who reported, researched and had their own opinions on a daily basis. But then their work was shared in the media where they worked. I sure there was also hate speech and insults in the media back then, but they were not said with such ease and it was harder to publish them. Now that each and every journalist has their own Facebook account and their own news website, it’s quite easy to write your own “in-depth” analysis of your social media account, full of insults and disqualifications to a public person without offering solid proof, and then all the news portals that share your opinion to quote you and refer to what the journalist wrote on their profile. And then the Helsinki Committee and the Association of Journalists come out with a condemnation of what the journalist wrote on their own Facebook account, and then complaints will be filed, but the journalist will not really care because he/she has supporters of his/her thesis. What is striking is that such news and “analysis” full of juicy insults have higher readability and are more shared than an in-depth journalistic text, for which the journalist went on field, collecting statements, reading documents, etc. And these journalists that are very active on Facebook have thousands of followers, or loyal audiences who follow all of their posts.

The readability, the “in favor” and “against” comments of these posts, the conversations of who and what they posted on Facebook, reflect the misery of our frustrated society hungry for insults, especially insults against successful women. Fatime Fetai will of course return to Bogovinje, it is her birthplace where her family lives, but we in the metropolis will remain buried in our own pettiness. Statistics show that in Bogovinje women suffer domestic violence, and what about women in Skopje who suffer sexual violence even when crossing the street. When they go to their workplaces, and the construction workers, high up on the buildings, call out insults. What about women in Skopje and around the world who suffer domestic violence, someone may not be an Albanian man and have a hundred college degrees and a decent job, and still beat his wife when he gets home. We should not seek to liberate the women in Bogovinje from violence, yet we should liberate our minds from hatred and chauvinism. And admit to women that they are bigger men than men.
It was women prosecutors who were most visible in the fight against crime led by the Special Prosecutor’s Office. All of them have their own families, some of them children, who don’t care about Gruevski’s escape, Janeva’s resignation and her involvement in the “Racket” case. Reactions to such reports are the easiest step, but they do not change anything either in the media or in the fight against hatred. Because parties need such journalists and such news portals to spread their party propaganda. Now with the most famous news website aggregator time.mk, it is a lot easier to be a journalist and have an opinion on anything and be against everything. But it’s hard to create a quality journalistic product that will change something in society and move it from status quo. The Internet, namely partisan portals, as well Facebook and Twitter have become the guides for daily news. You can’t see the forest from the trees, ie from the turbo folk news, the journalists can no longer see the reality, ie the real news that actually affects the citizens. At the end of the day, the wise thoughts that are posted daily on Facebook and Twitter are unlikely to be remembered as those of famous philosophers, because even the wisest philosophers couldn’t think of something smart to say or write every day. What will remain is the one that has been created and has changed something.