General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYou call that journalism?
For 35 years, I was a journalist and educator and I dont think I ever practiced my craft or taught students to perform the way so-called journalists do it these days.
It has been at least four years since George Stephanopoulos let Rudy Giuliano get away with claiming on national TV that there were no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during the George W. Bush administration. Former members of the W administration have repeated the same absurd claim in the intervening years. But its only recently that the media have ridiculed them for it
after the fact, of course.
Never have I seen a so-called journalist challenge such assertions when theyre being made let alone heard an interviewer ask, Are you out of your goddamned mind?
As a result, viewers whose grasp of reality is as frail as Donald Trumps walk away convinced that, Yep, W kept us safe its Barack Obama thats responsible for the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today.
Lets stop calling people who seem to care more about how they look on camera and how theyre perceived by readers than about informing the public journalists. Call them what they are, men and women who are paid large sums to carry around microphones and ask chicken-shit questions so conservatives wont accuse them of being liberal and men and women who carry around notebooks who are afraid to dig for the truth because a sources feelings might get hurt and the source may refuse to talk to them anymore.
Journalists who are afraid to burn their sources are nothing more than a conduit for what those sources want the public to believe.
I dont mean to suggest that the pursuit of truth requires those seeking it to be rude or unnecessarily combative it does mean, however, that they should know what their source is talking about and recognize when that source is prevaricating, obfuscating or simply being unclear.
jayschool
(180 posts)Or as one of my journalism professors, 35 years ago, told a classmate when she said she wanted to be a television news anchor:
"Honey, that's not journalism. That's show business."
Wednesdays
(17,249 posts)a hundred times more than do genuine journalists.
ffr
(22,649 posts)So "journalism" today means abiding by what management dictates from above. And corporate dollars keep the office parties buttered up, while hard hitting journalism gets trampled and sent with walking papers.
It's the truth of the matter at the moment. It'll change only after we replace the liars in power with people deserved of respect.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)The mighty Oregonian has been downsized 100 fold. Tiny newspapers 3 times a week now. Online they have to make their stories as click-bait as possible to get readers.
The TV news have always got most of their hard-hitting local news from the newspapers. They will have to have their own news investigators because the newspapers dont have the resources anymore.