Heroes Of Journalism

I realised that since I wanna be a journalist, I gotta have some role model to look up to... And so I've been doing some homework on journalists who have made a mark in history and written their ways into immortality...

It won't be fair to any of them if i dedicated an entire entry on one of them, cos i have not done enough to get in-depth knowledge about every one of them and a simple and brief fact-only entry won't do justice to their contributions they have made...

The one that caught my attention the most was this lady, Nellie Bly... Once under Joseph Pulitzer (yep, the prize is named after him), she feigned insanity to investigate reports of violence and abuse at the Women's Lunatic Asylum in 1887. She practiced facial expressions in front of a mirror and checked herself into a boarding house... The boarders were alarmed by her hysterical behaviour and called for the police, who then declared her 'undoubtedly insane' with the help of docotrs...

At the asylum which she was then sent to, some of the 'food' she was made to eat was spoiled meat and bread that was actually dried dough... Basically inedible... She and her fellow inmates were made to sit on cold hard benches for nearly entire days... Nurses bathed them simply by emptying a freezing bucket of water over their heads and then there were made to stand up in order to drip-dry... The nurses abused the inmates verbally and physically when they didn't comply to their instructions...

To cut the long story short... Bly's undercover mission at the asylum embarrased many medical professionals and a grand jury was set up to launch an investigation into the conditions of the asylum... As a result, they were given a $850k increment of budget to improve the state of the asylum...

Heard of G.I. Joe? Yep, the character was based on a real person... His name was Ernie Pyle... He was a war correspondent who followed the soldiers wherever they went... Instead of reporting on the movements of the armies and the strategies employed by the generals, Pyle generally wrote from the footmen's point of view... He wrote a column urging the government to give soldiers fight pay just like how airmen were given flight pay... Congress then passed a law in the same year giving soldiers a 50% pay increment! It was called the 'Ernie Pyle' bill...

He passed on with his legacy on April 18, 1945, on the island of Iejima (i wonder if it's iwo jima??) His last words were spoken to Lt. Col. Coolidge, Commanding Officer of 305th, and they were simply, 'Are you all right?' He said it with a smile as they ducked from a firing machine gun... The gunner opened fire again and Pyle was struck in the left temple... Pyle was laid to rest finally in Hawaii, in between Col. John Strain and Brig. Gen. Campbell...

2 different journalists in 2 different eras... But both wrote to in search of the truth, the truth that improves the lives of others, the truth that brings light into darkness... And that's what I wanna do as a journalist, to seek the truth, to be the eyes of people who can't witness events that shape the world, to fight for justice with my pen and paper...