Journalists are not the most important people in the world. When the media writes about itself - the functions it performs and the travails of those who work in it - it often seems to others that a sense of perspective is somehow temporarily mislaid.
The observation is at times well made: there are few things less edifying than the members of a profession or craft extolling the unique importance of their own contribution to society.
With that restraining caveat as a backdrop, World Press Freedom Day which falls today is an appropriate moment to note the contribution a free media does make to a healthy democracy and to remind ourselves how fortunate we are in Ireland, compared to much of the rest of the world. Ours is a stable democracy in which a sovereign people freely choose who governs them.
Where information is power, the power to decide who rules is best exercised by a well informed electorate. For the system to work with credibility, the mechanisms for informing the public cannot, by definition, be independent. Thus in successful democracies the function discharged by the media, while not enshrined in the structure of the State like parliament or the criminal justice system, comes close to them in importance.
Where a free press does not exist (which, sadly, is most parts of the world), those who hold power, and those who seek to usurp it, understand this very well. This is why such effort is put into suppressing free media in almost the entire Middle East, most of Africa, much of South America and a fair swathe of Asia. Dictators hate a flow of information they do not control and they hate to the point of violence and murder those who dedicate themselves to purveying the truth. Last year, 63 journalists were killed in the course of their work and 176 remain in prison for incurring the wrath of those in power.
But the situation is not totally bleak. Technology is proving - not for the first time - to be a powerfully liberating force. A well equipped reporter with a satellite phone is virtually impossible for any regime to control; a savvy computer operator with a blog is difficult to silence - the citizen journalist is a growing phenomenon whose impact on the mainstream media may be profound.
From China, to the United States, to the European Union, efforts are alive to control the free flow of information under various guises from national stability to the "war on terror". Such moves should be resisted. One doesn't have to accept totally the great American journalist IF Stone's maxim "Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed" but it is a good starting point.