In modern societies, journalism is often framed through the ideals of objectivity, neutrality, and professional detachment.
These concepts are widely treated as the hallmarks of good journalism. Yet, while they may hold practical value, they obscure a deeper, more enduring truth: journalism has always been a form of activism. At its core, journalism is not simply the transmission of information but a moral and political act. It is a conscious intervention in the public sphere. It challenges power, amplifies silenced voices and shapes a society’s collective imagination.
To report a truth is to take a position – and to publish it is to activate change. Thus, to declare that ‘journalism is activism’ is not a provocation or exaggeration; it is a recognition of the historical and ethical reality of what journalism has always been.
Just as journalism cannot be divorced from morality, it also cannot be separated from intellectual and philosophical inquiry. Some of the world’s greatest thinkers, like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt and Edward Said, enriched journalism by merging it with philosophical depth and intellectual courage.
In South Asia, intellectuals like Maulana Maududi, Maulana Azad, Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Eqbal Ahmad and Faiz Ahmed Faiz played the same transformative role. These figures were not journalists in the narrow professional sense alone. They were activists, critics, visionaries and the moral voices of their eras. Through their essays, editorials and investigative writings, they exposed forces of oppression, dismantled colonial and authoritarian narratives and broadened society’s understanding of justice, rights, dignity.
Their journalism was never passive. It was a form of intellectual resistance – a refusal to let power, violence or falsehood define reality. It was moral steadfastness and a commitment to truth even when truth was dangerous. And it was the defence of the public’s right to know; the belief that people have an inherent claim to transparency and justice. This is why the legacy of these intellectual journalists continues to shape how we understand journalism today: as a moral and philosophical mission rather than a mere profession.
The activist spirit of journalism becomes most visible when one examines its relationship with power and authority. Investigating corruption, exposing state abuses, documenting human rights violations and questioning dominant narratives – all these acts are inherently subversive. They destabilise the comfort of those who benefit from secrecy and impunity.
Like an activist, a journalist unsettles the powerful not by slogans but by documented evidence. When a journalist reveals what the powerful want to hide, he or she becomes an active agent in the broader struggle for transparency, justice and democracy.
This is why journalism is often feared by authoritarian regimes and unaccountable institutions. Genuine journalism undermines the architecture of oppression. It forces society to look into mirrors it would prefer to avoid. It lights up corners of power designed to remain in darkness. In this way, journalism is not just a mirror reflecting reality. It is a spotlight that illuminates the machinery of injustice.
To view journalism as activism does not mean abandoning accuracy or fairness. On the contrary, it means embracing a higher form of integrity. The idea that one can remain neutral in the face of injustice is a dangerous illusion. Neutrality in conditions of oppression invariably favours the oppressor. Journalism demands not neutrality but principle; and a commitment to truth over convenience, evidence over propaganda and justice over fear.
A journalist must remain rigorous in research, transparent in method and balanced in judgment, but must also reject the pretence that all narratives carry equal moral weight. Indifference to injustice is not journalistic integrity but complicity. Journalism guided by courage, clarity and responsibility strengthens the social fabric and inspires collective transformation.
Journalism and activism ultimately share a common moral horizon. Both aim to make society more just, more humane and more conscious of its responsibilities. Journalism becomes activism when it embraces, rather than avoids, this moral horizon. It recognises that truth itself is a form of resistance; that documenting suffering is an act of solidarity with the vulnerable; and that challenging power is a moral obligation. In times when voices are stifled, when natural environments are ravaged and when historical narratives are manipulated, journalism becomes one of the strongest tools of civic activism. It informs, unsettles, mobilises and keeps hope alive when hope is most threatened.
To practice journalism, therefore, is to take a stand with the public. It is to defend the weak against the strong, to illuminate injustices that others dismiss as normal, and to keep alive the possibility of a more equitable future. The courage to do so, often in hostile, dangerous or morally ambiguous environments, is the beating heart of journalism’s activist spirit.
Of course, journalists, like activists, are human. They may misjudge situations, misinterpret motives, or fall prey to global propaganda. In this era of post-truth politics, populism and sophisticated manipulations, even the most conscientious journalists can be misled. Sometimes, under the influence of an activist impulse, a journalist may interpret a situation emotionally or respond more intensely. These are errors of judgment, not acts of dishonesty. Recognising this human vulnerability allows us to see journalism as a living, evolving practice rather than an infallible institution.
The current controversy surrounding a prominent journalist from Swat illustrates the complex and often perilous terrain that journalists navigate. Having worked with various media organisations for over two decades, he is arguably the most widely followed journalist in the region. Yet, in recent days, he has been subjected to online threats and public hostility; first for supporting a musical event at an educational institution, and then for being accused, perhaps falsely, of calling ulemas terrorists.
Such tensions are not new. They have existed, in different forms, for generations in streets, markets, neighbourhoods and public debates. What is troubling, however, is the collective aggression directed at a single individual, the public nature of the threats and the silence of the state’s law-enforcement apparatus. Equally troubling is the conduct of those journalists who join such mobs, driven not by principle but by personal resentment or the desire to settle old scores.
These situations remind us why journalism remains one of the most necessary and most dangerous forms of activism. The willingness to speak, write and expose despite fear and hostility is what keeps democratic societies alive. A journalist who stands alone against intimidation embodies the true spirit of journalism: a commitment to truth that cannot be bullied into silence.
The writer heads an independent organisation dealing with education and development in Swat. He can be reached at: [email protected]
