Why does journalism exist?

.. according to Miss Sara Malm, September 2009

After spending half the night pondering biased and non-biased journalism, I started to question the purpose of my chosen career, like many times before.
Every time I doubt, or even consider that this might not be "it" for me, I re-read an short piece I wrote when I started the course, answering the question; what is journalism for?
I had just started at the Centre for Journalism, and knew nothing. But still.
The Scandi girl with all the ideals had a point, and I hope that I still do.
Anyway.
Here it goes... Read and weep.

Journalism exists in order to find and inform. To me that is the simple and sterile answer, and I shall below explain why.
In society today there is so much going on and constantly so much information that one simply cannot take it all in. As a journalist you get to choose what information people are going to read and find important. Through various more or less professional news reporting devices, and not to forget the blogs, twitter accounts and pod casts, people are constantly fed information daily. It is up to journalists to be the sieve covering society trying to sort the stories that will matter from everyday blabber.
As a journalist you are responsible for the way that society will judge a situation. You are in charge of what the masses are going to think, even if they do not believe it to be so. People are easier to affect than most of us dares to admit. Whatever is on the front page is what people automatically will assume is an important story and the perception that they gain will affect their decisions and opinions. It is up to you as a journalist to track down that number one story every day to let the masses know what is going on in the world and what is worth noticing.
Without journalists reporting and sharing the news everything would eventually either start to move backwards or become a veritable chicken coop where only the cocks that can cuckoo the loudest will be heard even though they might not have the most important things to say - they might even be lying. If there is not one little chick discovering the truth then what will the chickens think is right?

Journalism is also for seeking and finding. There are millions if not billions of events every day that does not get twittered about. The six year old Afghani girl that can not get to school because she has lost her leg stepping on a land mine, for example. Why is no one helping her? Where is the support supposed to come from? Was this landmine a product of the ongoing war or are there still old Soviet landmines out there on the country roads on the outskirts of Kabul? So many questions that needs to be asked to so many.
Imagine that we were able to plunge deep into the mind of every single human being on this planet. To be able to go through approximately 75 years worth of memories and stories at the end of everybody‘s life. I believe that there is at least one story in every person that needs, or in this case would have needed, to be told.
Journalism exists not only because of the reason stated above, i.e. in relation to daily news reporting, but also in order to try to discover these stories and ask the right questions. Journalism is for finding and informing, and it is a great responsibility.