After watching a clip from "State of Play" and the story of the photojournalist who won the Pulitzer Prize, there are similarities in the way they do journalism, but fictional journalism and the real thing showed themselves to be very different.
The real contrast between the two was emotion in my opinion. "State of Play" showed journalists to be very cutthroat and very intent on revealing the truth, no matter who it hurt or what the consequences. As it was said in class though, truth can be a weapon. If your audience is not ready, it will hurt them. In contrast, the photojournalist had a heart for the hostage situation that was going on. It was a small town and he was emotionally invested in everything. He could not bring himself to take a picture of the cut-up, thrashed, 5-year-old girl because it was too graphic. If that had been a fictional situation, I think they definitely would have revealed the picture of the little girl. Fiction is meant to shock, as opposed to real life where people are real and have real emotions and do what the average person would do.
Sometimes with fiction journalism out there as a model, we forget that journalists are just average people who have normal responses to unusual situations. Real journalists are not much different than us, while fictional journalists can be very ruthless as they try to get to the bottom of the story in a very pressing, cutthroat manner to not only reveal the truth, but advance their careers.
That is the difference between truth and fiction.
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