excellent rant reflecting that pov
Message 21327632
I want to elaborate on the post below this one. I attended the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia in 1974-75 and I was appalled by what I saw there. I had professors who were as universally liberal as flying moonbats and "advocacy journalism" was just becoming vogue.
I wanted to be a writer, and I thought that going to journalism school might give me some valuable training. I was mistaken.
Put the time in perspective. I was in J-School right after the end of the Vietnam War and immediately after Woodward and Bernstein set the bar for journalism for the next 30 years. W & B brought down a Presidency and CBS helped us skulk out of Vietnam defeated in the press when we were never beaten in the field. THAT SHIT became what "journalism" was all about.
Advocacy journalism was a disgusting notion to me. The basic premise was that people are too damned stupid to understand the news all by themselves, so you must "intrepret" it for them, so they don't miss the point. Bend it, break it or shake it--- just so you tell the sheeple how to think.
I might have felt better about the idea of advocacy journalism if I hadn't run across some of the most dense, obtuse, ignorant dumbasses I ever met in my life in J-school. Folks, these individuals WERE NOT the best and the brightest people you'd ever want to meet. Some of them couldn't pour piss out of a boot. Most of them couldn't even write. They had about as much real-world experience as South American Pygmies .
THAT's who is giving you your news today.
Plus, the entire "GOTCHA" aspect of journalism was born like a thalidymide baby in those days. Wanna win a Pulitizer? Don't report the NEWS, you idiot! Bring me a severed head on a pike!
That crap has continued for 30 years now, and the MSM has usually gotten away scot-free with its egregious errors, sloppiness and self-centered reporting. I am delighted to see more people paying attention to what these assholes have been doing for a long, long time.
Maybe 90% of blogs are pure crap, but a few of them bring attention to the cockroaches that have been scuttling across the kitchen floors of America without fear of a light ever shining on them and claiming to be "reporters" when they do it. My ass.
Whoever wrote that story for Newsweek should be fired. The editor who ran the story should be fired. The people who were killed as a result of the story should be allowed to sue the magazine and everyone involved in that steaming pile. Accountability should cut both ways.
I see a big change happening in journalism today. The pendulum swings slowly, but I see it moving in the opposite direction now, after it's been heading left for three decades. When "GOTCHA" journalism turns around and GETS YOU, I see good things happening.
I learned all about the "Fairness Doctrine" and the "Fourth Estate" and the "Watchdog of Government" when I was in J-School. You know the one thing NOBODY ever mentioned?
Honesty.
Posted by Acidman @ 07:21 PM • Permalink • Comments [8] • TrackBack [1] |
