For the past 25 years News three state frameworks were changed, we witnessed numerous wars, in the region and across the planet, we listened to and supported almost daily appeals to save the planet from climate change, our journalists and editors survived numerous physical attacks, founders of hundreds of propaganda works on their own and on at the expense of loved ones, during the last two and a half decades in Montenegro, several political parties were created and extinguished, the largest and strongest one is still alive and well, but we also experienced its fall even though it did everything to see the end of us... But nothing from mentioned is not equal to the importance of what happened to the profession - the arrival of the Internet era and the transition from print to digital. That is, the transformation of traditional society and values into a virtual world and standards. Instead of readers or viewers, followers and bots arrived as if from some other planet, and the truth is, that expensive or the most expensive word not only of our profession but also of the human race - got a new meaning.
We live in a time that philosophers and sociologists already define as the age of post-truth! Almost two and a half thousand years after Socrates wrote his Defense, and Sophocles Antigone, the truth is not what facts and arguments show and confirm, but what some political leader, religious leader, famous football player or celebrity star declares.
Mark Twain, the great American writer, wrote a famous thought almost 150 years ago: "While a lie goes around the world twice, the truth is just putting on its shoes".
This little bravado vividly describes how even then, in the 19th century, it was difficult to fight for the truth! That is, how the truth has always been an outsider in the race with untruth, just as democracy is often powerless in a war with a dictatorship. And the free media are at war with propaganda.
If it was like that at the time of the first industrial revolution, when the first newspapers were just starting to be founded, when there were no radio waves, let alone television, when people signed their words - what can we say today? When in the age of the Internet and social networks, every owner of a FB or Twitter account is declared a medium, and when divisions of nicknames and bots attack the unprotected truth with one goal - to win! And that lies, gossip, spin, half-truths, run over the fact, kill the truth, without choosing the means. And not caring about the brutality of his methods.
Never has the world had a greater production of information, and never has it been in greater confusion and disbelief. Absurd, but that's how it is.
That is why today it is the responsibility of journalists and serious media, among which, since its foundation, i News, greater than ever, because our profession has perhaps the greatest responsibility and role in defending the truth and facts. In proving that the sacred rule of the profession the facts are indisputable, the comment is free - still valid. And it makes sense.
The corona virus kills people because it is a vicious epidemiological disease, and the vaccine is the most effective cure for any infection since the time of the brilliant mind of Louis Pasteur - whatever social networks and their heroes claim and spread, under their own or fictional names.
That's why I would even after 25 years News and after almost 35 years of the mission of independent and responsible journalism spread in Montenegro by the pioneers of the journalism industry, invited all our colleagues, and in News and in all serious media in Montenegro, the region, Europe, the world, in a common front for the defense of the profession. And that means defending the truth. And a fact. Because just as a vaccine is the best medicine against a virus, the truth is the only barrier against an epidemic of lies and misinformation.
Finally, to paraphrase the famous American president Thomas Jefferson - if I had to choose between a country without free media and truth, but with an average salary of 6.000 euros and a country with an average of 600 euros but with a free press and responsible media - then I would choose this second.
Happy 25th birthday. And to those who write and edit in News and to those who believe them.
Bonus video:
