Scoop! Journalists in Fiction: Thinkers, scribblers and cattle

The Inky Path

Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society. If you have favourite representations of journalists in European fiction or insights into ways they are portrayed, please email Scoop!

...Let me tell you something. There are three sorts of people - thinkers, scribblers and cattle. It is true I secretly count almost all who are called thinkers and poets among the scribblers, and most of the scribblers belong among the cattle. But that's not the point. The business of thinkers is to search out the truth. There is, however, a secret about truth which, oddly enough, is but little known, although I should have thought it as clear as daylight - and it is this: truth is like the sun, its value depends wholly upon being at a correct distance away from it. If the thinkers were allowed to have everything their own way they would steer our globe straight into the sun and burn us all to ashes. Small wonder, then, their activity sometimes causes the cattle to become restive and bellow: Put out the sun, in the name of Satan, put it out! It's the business of us scribblers to preserve a correct and satisfactory distance from the truth. A really good scribbler - and there aren't many! - understands the thinker and feels with the cattle. It's our job to protect the thinkers from the rage of the cattle and the cattle from too hefty doses of truth. But I admit the latter is the easier of the two and the one we make the best job of in the ordinary way of things.