# "Journalists" and "experts". A note on a new notion

Vladimir Vladimirovich Zalesski

"Journalists" and "experts". A note on a new notion.


The report "The Night Before the Triumph" (Kommersant newspaper No. 227, 12/10/2019, p. 1 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4188198) contains an interesting mention of experts (экспертах) with journalistic ID cards who began to give interviews to journalists .


This is a curious mention.


And Alexander Dumas, and Victor Hugo, and Jack London, for example, were often published in newspapers (magazines). But they were called not a journalists, but a writers.


Leo Tolstoy - the author of "Sevastopol Stories" - is he a journalist or a writer?


Pushkin and Gogol - are they journalists?


Writers Chekhov and Gorky grew out of a journalism.


Journalism, whatever it is today, it has traditions.


Here, now we turn to "experts" ("экспертам").


How to recognize them? If they have a journalistic ID cards?


There's an elusive line here.


It wasn't necessarily for the journalist Khashoggi to meet the events that made him famous around the world. But it is clear that Khashoggi - "expert" ("эксперт") (if he was an "expert") would live in a different way.


"Experts" can demonstrate a line of behavior.


For example, a radio listener make a phone call into a some radio program and starts saying some compliments. Having felt that people in the radio studio had relaxed, and that he would be able to express his thoughts completely, the listener said that a number of international gas sales contracts were concluded at unprofitable prices. After an instant pause, one of those who are present in the studio rushes into a battle. He furiously says that prices are secret and there"s nothing to talk about. Most likely, an "expert" ("эксперт") is thrown into the battle, but not a "journalist" - in such an episode.


There are situations and more complicated. A man who may never have heard of Napoleon"s defeats and of Talleyrand"s diplomatic victories (and if he have heard, he understood little), leads a long story about the "evil forces" surrounding Russia from all sides. What to do, according his opinion? - To declare a 100-50 kilometer zone along (although outside) the Russian borders and when placing foreign missiles in this zone to answer in an extremely way.


His interlocutor sharply disagrees. "We are peaceful people!"


Perhaps there is not a single journalist in this option. Both are "experts" ("эксперты").


There are (in any case, existed) writers, journalists, teachers, historians, philosophers, educators, politicians, ... - specialists, professionals in a certain field. Of course, they unite in some way - in a number of cases. But the specialist and professional are distinguished by a certain self-esteem, the presence of an individual, not a group, conscience, the desire for individualization and for some kind of individual existence.


"Experts" ("эксперты") like to emphasize the existence of an "expert community" ("экспертное сообщество").


"Experts" should not be confused with specialists conducting medical, merchandising and other examinations (it"s a separate specialty).


Why were there not enough such notions as "writers", "journalists", "teachers", "historians", "specialists", "professionals" ...? Why did they need the notion of "experts" ("эксперты")?


Maybe this is due to a change in the notion of "people of free professions"? - They cease to be "free"? The money of (from) a "public", of (from) the population gradually replaced by money from the budget?


"Experts" ("эксперты") is a new notion. And it deserves further study.


As for the journalists ... They, according to Andrei Kolesnikov, the author of the above report in the Kommersant newspaper, are interviewing "experts." Of course, they are not only interviewing, and not only an "experts" ...


December 10, 2019 11:21


Translation from Russian into English: December 10, 2019 18:23.

Владимир Владимирович Залесский ""Журналисты" и "эксперты". Заметка о новом понятии".