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Journalism is passing through many shades of transformations. Of late, even the schools of media would find it hard to monitor and understand the subtle variations of its evolution. We now hear of ‘news analysis’ and ‘news commentary’ apart from unbiased objective news reporting. The hosts of user content broadcasting methods are adding to the news commentary and news analysis sector of news.  Whatever be the last minute development, a journalist needs to tell his opinion. You may agree, I may agree, but fundamentally the bosses should agree or an opinion can cost you your favourite job, just as it happened to Juan Williams of NPR, New York. His seemingly ‘caught off the guard’ folly was  that he commented on a personal level and  interestingly his job description reads thus; ‘News Analyst’. His comment was his own feeling of being nervous, when he saw somebody dressed in Muslim garb in an aeroplane as they identified themselves first and foremost as Muslims.

Setting aside the issue of Islamophobia, the action of the employer on grounds of commenting is the real focus.  Well, NPR has its  well established policy of offering objective news content to the public. Stepping over the line of impartiality in the news coverage could be a joke these days as without the personal or corporate tag line, no piece of news finds space in the print or on other media. Most nations do not have an impartial press, in fact most nations strive to filter into the news moghuls so that the news is controlled in some way or other. As  with the instance of Williams, he, in is capacity of News analyst had commented on something which he thought to have reason to comment.

Where is the thin line that separates a personal comment and a professional comment ? Can a journalist be without any personal prejudice or other influences? Every professional journalist would like to work with a certain employer who is the market leader. The price he pays knowingly is that he will have to work within a frame that the employer sets before him as  ‘operating guidelines.’ Journalism would be just another commodity on the offer if the journalist is silenced for his views. When the management brandishes the pink slip for every ‘slip’ of the journalist, the freedom of expression suffers the greatest jolt. Are the days coming when the newspapers offer only objective news items.? But does objectivity exist at all, when human beings value an incident with human passions, human emotions and human reasoning. Water-downed journalism with a minimum of personal opinion, with  a full spectrum of fear for every word said and opinion remarked is definitley not the future of journalism.  
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/10/25/ent.npr.analyst/index.html