Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.
Interpretation
Journalism is a powerful tool that, if used correctly, can have a significant impact on society.
Warren Ellis's quote compares journalism to a gun, emphasizing the notion that it is a formidable force when wielded with precision and care. The metaphor suggests that, like a single bullet, a well-aimed piece of journalism can have a tremendous effect, symbolically 'blowing off a kneecap' of the world by revealing truths, challenging norms, or inciting change. It highlights the importance of purpose and focus in the craft of journalism, indicating that meaningful impact doesn't necessarily require volume or multiple attempts, but rather skill and intention in delivery.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of investigative reporting, one might quote Ellis to highlight the power of focused journalism.
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.
Emotions get in the way but they don't pay me to start crying at the loss of 269 lives. They pay me to put some perspective on the situation.
It's alright, you can afford to lose a day or two
A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."
The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.
When it seems that God shows us the faults of others, keep on the safer side-it may be that your judgment is false. On your lips let silence abide. And any vice that you may ascribe to others, ascribe at once to them and yourself, in true humility. If that vice really exists in a person, he will correct himself better, seeing himself so gently understood, and will say of his own accord the thing that you would have said to him.
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