Sunday, March 9, 2014

Responsible Journalism

You Have To Want It

I don't have to tell anyone that since the advent of 24 hour news cycles and screaming, ranting, venting ideologues masquerading as journalists, the news has metastasized into this self-referential monster that has almost no relationship to the Truth (whatever that is).  The sheer volume of the crap makes reading the Sunday paper a daunting task.

As an old journalism teacher, however, I do have some suggestions on how to pare down your reading to only the essential stuff.  You'll notice that there are two kinds of stories that appear on the news pages (We won't even talk about the op-ed stuff.):  stories objectively reporting things that happen in the world and stories telling us the reactions of politicians and pundits to those happenings.  For instance, the breeching of security at Benghazi and the subsequent deaths were serious things that actually happened in real time, but that only comprised a relatively small part of the coverage.  The main coverage of Benghazi focused on political reactions and fall-out.  In other words, it devoted a lot of air time, a lot of column inches, to meaningless political posturing and finger pointing, none of which had anything to do with the actual event.

In that spirit, I spent my morning going through my news web sites while waiting for my new paper delivery person to get the Post and the Times here before EIGHT-FUCKING-O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!  I went through THE DAILY BEAST, THE HUFFINGTON POST, FOX NEWS, and POLITICO and simply wrote the headlines of all those stories that would, to my way of thinking, constitute a complete waste of time to look at.  I'm going to resist my natural impulse to make snarky comments about each item and just let the list speak for itself.

THE LIST (in no particular order)

"Ann Coulter Disparages Browning Of America"
"Sarah Palin Delivers Vehement CPAC Speech"
"The Right's Plan To Demolish Labor Unions"
"Newt's CPAC Blunder"
"Michelle Bachman Takes A Jab At Hillary Clinton"
"Bobby Jindal Gets A Much Needed History Lesson"
"Rand Paul:  Obama Is Shredding The Constitution"
"McConnell:  Congress Won't Make A Lot Of Big Important Things Happen This Year"
"Santorum Weighs In On Why The GOP Loses"
"Perry:  I Don't Think Nugent's Shocking Comment Was Racist"

I have to add a third category here:  all those lurid, leering articles about celebrities and their fascinating lives.

"The Absolute Worst Thing You Can Do With A Kit Kat"
"Justin and Selena Eat Breakfast Together"
"An Inspiring Tale Of Three Pussycats"
"Miley Cirus Needs A Teleprompter To Remember Her Lyrics"
"Why You Should Embrace Slow Sex"
"Selfies Of The Week"

After you get by all the garbage listed above (just the tip of the iceberg), you will discover some pretty good journalism, but you have to want it.





1 comment:

Chris Hinricher said...

I've started only using Reuters for my news fix. It's helped.