What is it like to be a journalist today? Are they driven by a desire to inform or by the need to earn a living? In the murky game of the commerce of news and the production of events, the journalist's position is ambiguous.
Through the history of journalism, and via the bias of contemporary testimony, a reflection on the state of the profession is necessary. What are the links between journalism, politics and finance? While the media implants its ideological influences within the core of society, the fantasy of objective and neutral news endures. The profession evolves in a frantic productivism. Profitability and the demand for rapid treatment of news have transformed journalists "into modern factory workers who aren't there to think." Except for a few public firms, it is rare that lower rung journalists raise their fists and fight against these work conditions. In private media groups - held in France by only six or seven monster firms - the rule of silence and self-censorship reigns. The precarious nature of the profession often muzzles any vocation of investigative and emancipated journalism.