This is an issue that has struck me many times and in many ways. Think of how often the media reports things you know are wrong and they keep reporting them even after they are debunked. Think how they misinterpret quotes. Think how their bias blinds them. Think how little they know of the fields upon which they "report." It is the rare legal expert with the slightest hint of how the law works. I've watched business reporters spew conventional wisdom without a working knowledge of the terms they are misusing. I've seen sports announcers who don't understand the basic rules of the games they cover. Facts, logic, and comprehension be damned! I have an opinion!
And talk about worthless opinions. I always think of that stupid girl who worked for one of the tech companies and whined about her pay, before getting fired a couple years back. In her oblivious tirade, she made the statement that all she wanted to do was "write snarky comments about food" and now she would not get that chance. Idiot Millennials opining smugly and cynically at things they know nothing about, with an unearned contempt and no credentials whatsoever to justify anyone listening is not journalism.
Nor are articles on what the reporter saw on television or found online and thought was cute.
And Heaven help you when you get to that category of idiots who write whatever is on outraged little their minds. Every day, Yahoo posts "stories" that are little more than "Hey, I saw something online I don't like!" The snowflakes are big into shaming articles. Thou shallt not judge! How dare you throw someone off a plane! How dare you shame bad moms engaged in abusive behaviors! Don't judge parents encouraging five year olds to be transsexuals! Don't shame the girl who wants to wear a thong to prom! This black girl has white splotches... this fat girl in a bikini... this girl got a tattoo on her face! How dare you judge! This one responded to a single troll who didn't like her dark skin tone! This chick responded to a troll who commented on her massive cellulite. They changed the world! Hillary sent a tweet, it was amazing! Shame no one... unless I don't like them, then destroy them. This is what passes for journalism. I doubt most of these people have even read a genuine journalistic article. They've certainly never written one.
This weekend, a guy wrote an article for SBNation (sporting site) bravely whining that we should not "shame" the underclass players who left school early to enter the NFL draft just because they weren't drafted. Uh... no one is shaming them. NO ONE! To the contrary, there's pretty universal agreement that college football needs to allow them to return to college if they aren't drafted because everyone thinks it's senseless to punish them. This loser invented a straw man shamer just to whine about people shaming people. Pathetic.
The lack of logic. The indifference to facts. The unwillingness to understand rather than run with a knee-jerk interpretation. The nonsense. The lack of legitimate news value. The falsely elevated whinerism. This is modern journalism. They should fire everyone in the procession and start over.
*Shrugs* Its what the public wants. Facts are boring, expensive to dig up things. Opinions are fun and free, as are lies and assumptions.
ReplyDeleteI disagree, I think there is ample appetite for facts, which is why so much opinion journalism masquerades as such. No one writes an article, "I hate cultural appropriation, so suck it." They write, "Cultural appropriation causes harm in these ways." The part they leave off is that they're pulling it out of their intersectional studies butt.
ReplyDeleteAnthony, How do you know it's what the public wants when there is no alternative for them to choose from to vote with their feet?
ReplyDeleteThis is something Hollywood says too: we only give the public what they want. Yet, they don't give an alternative that would let people actually choose. That's a rigged test.
And then, to the extent they do see an alternative, we see crashing ticket sales and massive growth in the offerings of pay television (which is generally much more intelligent).
Same thing here. Where do I turn if I don't want the presentation being given by all the media simultaneously?
tryanmax, I think you're right. There is a great deal of deception in what they are offering. It's the same way you see film directors and actors come out and tell you, "We used the book as if it were the Bible when we did this film... it's just like the book" when they were happy to rip the book to shreds or "we would never insult ____," when the film is meant as an insult to that group.
ReplyDeleteAt this pint, I have to say that journalism seems dead to me. It's just the dregs left and they won't do legwork and they don't have integrity or creativity.
Tryanmax,
ReplyDeleteIn my humble opinion what the public is looking for is a friend with similar views who will provide it with not just mere facts but a narrative as well as context (two separate but often related things).
For example, regarding cultural appropriation, there are places you can go if you want to read articles mocking the concept, there are places you can go if you want to read articles which treat it as a solemn truth.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI'd say news coverage is substantially different than Hollywood. Its exponentially easier and cheaper for someone to offer fact based news than it is for someone to make and distribute a big budget (or even not so big budget movie).
Along those lines, the fact no one is getting rich offering 'just the facts ma'am' reporting indicates to me there is no real public appetite for it. As far as I can tell, people get fame and wealth doing the opposite.
Happy May Day, comerades!
ReplyDelete"Where do I turn if I don't want the presentation being given by all the media simultaneously?"
ReplyDeleteYpu turn to Commentarama Politics. An Island of sanity in an ocean of madness.
GypsyTyger
Anthony - I think to a point you are right and Andrew is right. We could always find what opinion news we preferred, but it used to be relegated to the minor leagues of media including print news. Free Speech, Baby!
ReplyDeleteBut now it's moved to the mainstream print & media were they they think they are still printing the "truth", but it has slowly morphed into something different. And they are in a tough spot because each media outlet MUST get the clicks or die. It started with Dan Rather-gate where the CBS producers decided to run with a story that was completed bogus. It was found to be flagrantly false with counterfit docs and all. CBS never recanted...and CBS News survived. Oh, Dan Rather had a tough time for while after being dismissed, but now he's back as the arbitor of truth-telling....seriously. No harm done. Look at Brian Williams. He literally made stuff up and, well, no real consequences.
And print has gotten just as bad. The NYT for years has condemned on the front page and retracted on the 50th page down at the bottom in a 1 paragragh retraction. But they could do that before Twitter et al. What they print runs the internet media like electricity through a wire and is there forever even with a retraction.
The real problem is that there is now this giant conflation of "news" and "opinion". The "mainstream media" has been slipping in more and more "opinion" mascarading as "news". Heck, even the NYT actually hired a "conservatvie" Op/Ed writer who had the temerity to "question" climate change orthodoxy - NOT DENY, but QUESTION - "PRESENT AN ARGUMENT". The NYT lost a lot of subscribers because of...hiring conservative. Not because they were condemned on the front page/retract on 50, but because they hired a "conservative" Op/Ed writer.
Didn't mean to be so long-winded...
ReplyDeleteAnd Tryanmax, you Commie! Didn't you hear it's "National Loyalty Day"! Trump declared it so...signed a proclamation and everything. THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!!!! Trump is fascist dictator!!!!...well, except since 1958 when every other President has done it ever since....
Anthony, I do agree that news outlets are trying to compete with social media nad that people like like stories that affirm their feelings. But people also just like being right, and it's in that area that modern journalism is letting people (and themselves) down.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, I identify a tremendous difference between opinion journalism and what I'd call rebuttal journalism. The fact is, no one was going to contest cultural appropriation (to continue with the same example) had it not been offered as a serious concern to begin with.
Bev, Bias isn't the issue to my mind. Bias is just one more issue. The real issue is the loss of professionalism. Look at old school journalists/reporters. They looked for "newsworthy" items. They worked sources. They ran stories by editors who wanted proof. They never ran with rumor. They checked with targets before publishing.
ReplyDeleteNone of that is true anymore. Today, you have idiots sitting behind computers scanning the net for something to get upset about. Today, they run with rumor as soon as they hear it, whether it makes sense of not. They apply no logic, no filter. They do zero legwork. They don't care if the topic has news value of it just caught their eye.
The profession has become a joke and all these problems follow from that.
Thanks GypsyTyger! I like to think we do our best to be sane and rational! :)
ReplyDeleteAnthony, It's the same argument. "The public seems to buy what we're selling, so they must be happy." That argument is made everywhere people are pushing things against significant pushback.
ReplyDeleteAnd in each case, if an alternative appears, the lie gets exposed pretty quickly. But until an alternative appears, the lie lives on.
Bev, I was just thinking that since the breathless media has been informing us that The Handmaid's Tale is something that could really, actually happen in 2017, in Donald Trump's America, for real, that it was important to acknowledge the Mayday resistance that has risen up in response to the injustices and indignities that women all over are currently suffering under the abominable Trump regime.
ReplyDeleteBTW, since I've got you, Bev, how's that force breeding working out?
tryanmax, "Rebuttal journalism" is a great term for the modern political media. Anything Trump or the GOP do, the media rebuts.
ReplyDeleteAs an interesting aside, one of the "journalists" I read from time to time was whining that ESPN wasn't going to spoil the picks at the NFL draft. He actually said he was disappointed in them for not "rebelling" against the NFL on this. The whole statement read like it was written with someone with seething hatred for the NFL and couldn't understand why others weren't working to undermine the league. Unfortunately, that seems to be have become the mindset in a lot of sports journalism -- "My job to break the league and end its reign of evil." Sick.
Andrew - Media has always had a "bias" and it usually skewed toward holding the Govt/Pres accountable or in times of national security, they would actually help.
ReplyDeleteThey also kept the Op/Ed on the Op/Ed pages and the hard new on the actual news pages. And you're right. Journalists looked for newsworthy stories, not what could cause the most outrage. All you have to do is look at the whole 1st Amd issue in action. Too many reporters and politicians were calling for free speech to limited 'cause they all know what hate speech is...yet none could actually define it in any real terms. Just that if OUR people think we should, we will just get clicks. Scary...
Andrew, many if not all journalists take as a mission statement a line that was originally critical of the press.
ReplyDeleteFinley Peter Dunne, through his character Mr. Dooley, wrote this c. 1900: "Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward."
Admittedly, Mr. Dooley was a satirical, critical character, but even with that in mind, it's hard to find any reading which suggests that Dunne meant this was a proper role for the press.
Nevertheless, by 1936, Times of London Washington correspondent, Wilmott Lewis, before a luncheon of the AP, turned Dunne's jab into an aphorism, and declared the duty of the newspaper to be to comfort the afflicted, and to afflict the comfortable.
The idea was further popularized in 1960, given as a line to Gene Kelly (paying homage to H.L. Mencken) in Inherit the Wind, and delivered with utter sincerity. By the late 1980s, the same expression was applied to religion as describing either the nature of God or the duty of a Christian, lending the notion a air of moral authority.
When I was young I dreamed of nothing more than being a reporter. I went to college as a journalism major. I was taught that facts and only facts were to be reported (with sources checked and double-checked) so that the reader/viewer could consider them and reach their own conclusions. Opinion had only one place in journalism, the editorial page.
ReplyDeleteI didn't complete my degree, because I left to get married. There have been many times I've thought of going back and just as many times I've been asked why I don't. You summed it up very well. I've lost all respect for the field I once idolized.
Thanks Stacy, and welcome!
ReplyDeleteI had the same view of journalism growing up. Journalists were respected because they fearlessly reported the facts, good or bad. They worked sources, double-checked everything, and left opinion to the editorials.
That is not modern journalism today though, and that makes me sad. There is little left to respect in modern journalism, if anything. And sadly, I think it's getting worse all the time too.
tryanmax, I doubt the current crop even knows that much. The current crop seems to think being a journalist is about making snarky comments.
ReplyDeleteBev, It amazes me how many journalists seem happy with the idea of censoring people and suppressing views the don't like. That shows a real lack of understanding and love for their own profession.
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing stopping 'just the facts' news sources from springing up aside from a lack of demand. People want places that reflect their worldview and of course different people want different things. Sites like Breitbart and the Huffington Post do well catering to very different crowds.
Hey, did anyone been following ESPN in the last week? They layed off 100 sports reporters because the brainiacs who run ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) have decided that what people who watch/follow sports want is more political commentary and less actual sports reporting. Seriously...
ReplyDeleteBev, I've been following it. It's been really strange. The cost savings won't help their bottom line much. The people they fired seemed kind of random. Some of them I get, but others don't make any sense. And why they didn't fire more doesn't make any sense.
ReplyDeleteAnd through it all, the left has been swearing in every article you find on the subject that this has nothing to do with their ratings falling after they jumped left... a sure sign that politics was the issue.
Anthony, There are tremendous barriers to entry in the field. Anyone can start a blog, but you can't just get a viable national television network, news bureaus, and professional reporters.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, to your last point, I don't have any hard numbers, but there are a surprising number of completely independent internet journalists popping up, publishing on platforms like YouTube and Medium and being supported by donations. To be fair, many of these developed following through traditional media and very publicly jumped the corporate ship. But still, the fact that they can go it alone says a lot.
ReplyDeleteI don't expect this to become a long term trend, but I do think it will serve as a stepping stone to building some new journalistic outlets. The idea of reporters who are not employed by the publisher is alone intriguing.