Click here for Daily Photo Updates by Robert Galbraith
I have been a photojournalist for nearly two decades. It wasn't a career of choice, but it chose me. The excitement of the story and the ability to bring new light to unknown, or little known accounts of our everyday life fuels this desire in me.
Journalism is not a job, or simply a career. True journalism is about the love of life, and the description of it, be it good or bad. Each and every one of us possesses the ability to construct or destroy. It is the psychology and simple curiosity related to this ability that inspire me to document these ways of human existence, and, hopefully, to add to the advancement of our civilization.
The road of freelance journalism and basic survival has been a long and rocky relationship for me. A life of flirting with the poverty level is a reality for those who choose this profession, in comparison to those who use the profession for their own vanity and advancement, above the truth of news. As the media giants merge, and become more powerful, independent voice is being snuffed. Many media organizations are now used as podiums for special interest groups, politicians and lobbyists. In Canada, many media organizations have fallen from a once noble and honourable voice, to that of the above. All we can hope for is that this manipulation is just a decade-long bump in the road, rather than a re-routing of that road. Should we lose the independent voice in media, we will lose the media, as we once knew it.
Our job, as journalists, is to inform the uninformed and become a bridge to the truth; a real accounting. It is not a vehicle to get your name or face in the news. It is part of the advancement of our civilization, and the fewer independent voices it has, the further we regress. The journalist is not the news - he/she is just the messenger, and this should never be forgotten. A good journalist has a great thirst for life, and an even greater thirst to inform by the use of the truth.
Robert J. Galbraith, Montreal 2006
