Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they

The words of Russell Baker, spoken with the sharpness of one who knew both the pen and the world, reveal a troubling paradox: “Reporters thrive on the world’s misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.” In these lines, he unmasks the strange bond between journalism and tragedy—that calamity, which breaks the hearts of most, becomes the fuel that sustains the work of those who tell the world’s stories. For in chaos lies news, and in suffering lies the lifeblood of headlines.

The ancients knew this dilemma well. In the streets of Rome, criers shouted news of wars, assassinations, and disasters with voices full of urgency, while the citizens gathered with both dread and curiosity. Tragedy, it seemed, was the story that always drew the largest crowd. Even the poet Homer, in recounting the fall of Troy, thrived on recounting ruin, though his song was born from sorrow. Baker’s words remind us that what dismays humanity often feeds its hunger to know.

Consider the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. For families, it was grief beyond measure; for survivors, it was trauma without end. Yet for reporters, it was a story unmatched, filling columns and selling millions of papers across the globe. ors rushed to outpace one another, delighting in the details that horrified the grieving. The same pattern echoes in every age: catastrophe becomes commodity, and those who suffer are turned into ink and profit.

Baker’s saying is not mere condemnation, but a reflection on human nature. Reporters mirror the appetites of the people, who crave stories of disaster as moths crave flame. This “indecent pleasure” is less a flaw of journalism than a shadow upon the soul of society itself. For if tragedy did not draw readers, editors would not so eagerly print it. Thus his words are a call to honesty—that we recognize our own complicity in feasting upon sorrow.

Let the generations remember: to tell the truth of misfortune is necessary, for the world must know in order to act. But to delight in it, to profit from it, is a danger that corrodes compassion. Baker’s wisdom is a warning to both journalist and reader alike: that tragedy must not be consumed as spectacle, but borne as responsibility. For the world’s misfortunes are not stories alone—they are the lives of men and women, and they deserve reverence, not indecent pleasure.