For the last 54 years, countless writers have lived by the words of the late author Graham Greene who wrote that writers should have a “splinter of ice in the heart”. He meant that we need to maintain a critical distance from the events we cover, in order to remain objective.

But have journalists become part of the world’s problems, with our focus on catastrophes?

Today, international and political editor, Peter Hartcher, on the argument that some journalists have been “bad friends” to all of you, and the clarion call for a new type of writing, to meet this moment of calamity that we find ourselves in.

 

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