I think the key question for journalists today is the question whether or not journalism brings responsibility. There are many great schools for communication and journalism, on which journalist learn to write high quality articles on various subjects, there is a professional association for each part of the journalistic handcraft and journalists today can earn a good living from their work. With non of these there seem to be any problem. There is only that other question. Does a journalist have a social responsibility?

Does a journalist have craft specified ethics? Can a journalist from one day on the other decide not to be a journalist any more? I think this is a question that we cannot escape. The press is often seen as the fourth power in the Trias Politica, the dividing between executive, legislature and judiciary power. As the word says, all these three, with journalism four, powers are in the first place political powers. Politics come with "social relations involving authority or power" (http://dictionary.die.net/politics 03-10-2009), and with power comes responsibility. If the press is indeed the fourth power, than that means it has an enormous power, and with that, a huge responsibility.

That the press is that powerful is obvious. In the last hundred years three wars have been started influenced by the press. The Spanish-American war, the Vietnam war and the second Gulf war. The Spanish-American war was greatly caused by the struggle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst for popularity. Sensation in the papers let to improving sales, whether it was true or not. And the war certainly gave sensation in the papers, and there for, improving sales. The Vietnam war was highly promoted by Nixon favoured newspapers. With the second Gulfwar the war was strongly promoted by Fox News in the US and the and other Rupert Murdoch press stations. The powerfull Murdoch enterprise is strongest in the US, Australia and England. We shouldn't be surprised that these where the countries most willing to run into this war. Three examples. Maybe there are more examples, but these are the ones that I can give. In my opinion this means that journalism has enough power to be counted as a political power. With this political power the press has a great responsibility.