Posted by
Doctor Demex on Tuesday, September 26, 2006 9:32:47 AM
[ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 16, 2006]
To maintain their integrity, post-Watergate journalists began fancying
themselves adopting the objectivity of scientists: Anything heard
or observed, no matter how obvious, was not to be believed unless it
was corroborated by other sources. I said "fancying themselves"
because the objectivity of journalists really is nothing like the
meticulous methods of scientists, who usually tend to believe what they
see and, in general, are more interested in being right than in
publishing something that's embarrassingly wrong.
But the problem with this—and one I encountered every day when
reporters came to me as a source—is that most reporters are ordered to
go out and learn all they can about a subject they know nothing about
and then explain it to the world before the afternoon deadline.
Such rushed research by harried and uninterested reporters yields
inaccurate stories, but that's the way most people learn not only what
their government is doing but also what else is going on in the
world. Factual inaccuracy is ensured by the system. Will
Rogers joked that all he knew was what he read in the papers. In
his day, there were plenty of journalistic shenanigans to complain
about. But if he had lived into his 90s, which would have been
during the decade of he 1970s, he would have wondered whether
everything he knew was wrong.
For a branch of government, as John Chancellor pompously anointed his industry, the news media don't do a very good job.
With mainstream media as the gatekeeper of information flow from the
government to the people, the media took it upon themselves to verify
the truth of the information as well. But a systemic arrogance
befell the media: In controlling the flow of information, they found
that they could manipulate not only the flow, but also the information
itself.
As the world's population increases, so does the amount of information
about what they're doing. It's impossible for the media to report
everything that's going on all the time. Besides, some facts are
more interesting than others, depending on who's reading them.
It's the duty of the highly trained professional journalist to decide
for his readers what they should be reading, isn't it?
The incestuous nature of journalism schools and their graduates
promotes a type of groupthink that finds them putting a spin on
everything even as they deny doing so. "I'm an objective
journalist who lives only to provide information needed by the people,
my audience, my consumers, my customers, and, even though they proved
that they 'just don't get it' by stupidly electing that dummy Bush, I
will continue to educate them for their own good." Journalists
are humans, and they want to be believed when they speak. When
they sense they are not being believed they respond in kind, and with
hostility.