"Lucky" or Not. About the appalling state of journalism in Europe

 A day that start by listening to Radiohead's Thom Yorke screaming these lyrics cannot be denied as a defining day....

"It's gonna be a glorious days"...

I feel these lyrics were premonitory.

"We are standing on the edge...
The head of state has called for me, by name
But I don't have time for him.
It's gonna be a glorious day
I feel my luck could change".

Such a strange feeling.

It's a very important week for myself, with all my defining dates, and such important meetings.

And yet, it's also a disastrous week politically, announcing horrible changes, starting from Theresa May's speech yesterday and ending with Donald Trump's inauguration, a day after my birthday. 

"Pull me out of the aircrash
Pull me out of the lake
'Cause I'm your superheroin"...

What can we do from here?
Where can we go?

Am I the only one feeling like screaming for a continuous stream of hours?

I see some fellow journalists, former coworkers, getting ready to cover Trump's inauguration from Washington, and they don't have other things to say that "hey, look, I'm here, I'm a star", anything else to show that flags in close shots and selfies...

How did we get so low?

When I was freelancing from Miami in 2008, covering the election of the first "African American" president, selfies did not exist. I was working freelance and barely reimbursing the money I spent on travels. Covering the disenfranchisement of Haitian American citizens in Little Haiti, the two-tier policy on immigrants from Cuba and Haiti, the subprime crisis.

I hate what journalism has become. It is now almost impossible to get published if you write on real issues. 

When I travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan in May, last year, editors in chief replied to my proposals that displaced people were not news, that the battle in Mosul would be news when it would start. So they can now read in their cristal ball what will be, AND decide what will be news at the same time, months in advance.

Same story in Calais / Grande Synthe. Not news. Though when I travelled to Dadaab in 2011 one of the largest refugee camps in the world, I was already told that half a million Somali / Sudanese / Congolese people stranded without rights were "no news". I managed to get the story published, though, on the radio, in different papers.

Now, this year, nothing. Not on Brexit, not on the refugee crisis and the appalling situation in Paris where war survivors are sleeping under the railway.

And correspondents in America are getting ready for their selfies.

I know that our leaders, our editors in chief, our dormant silent majority just want people like me to give up, to stop telling them that there remain things terribly dysfunctional. 

But we cannot. We have the obligation to continue.

But don't you just feel like screaming sometimes?

Music screams louder than I will ever be able to... And people do listen. So I let you scream for me.

And then I'll choose. I'll choose to be "lucky". Cause I will.


-

Radiohead - 'Lucky' 

(acoustic)

"Lucky"

I'm on a roll, I'm on a roll
This time, I feel my luck could change
Kill me Sarah, kill me again with love
It's gonna be a glorious day

Pull me out of the aircrash
Pull me out of the lake
'Cause I'm your superhero
We are standing on the edge

The Head of State has called for me by name
But I don't have time for him
It's gonna be a glorious day
I feel my luck could change

Pull me out of the aircrash
Pull me out of the lake
'Cause I'm your superhero
We are standing on the edge

We are standing on the edge