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I, for one, am skeptical of everyone who still calls themselves a journalist.
by xbar 3y ago
I, for one, am skeptical of everyone who still calls themselves a journalist.
- no_butterscotch 3y agoYes, journalists used to speak truth to power. Now they work on behalf of the power. And they don't just work on behalf of power, they are power themselves, and it isn't the people's power despite their claim to being "the voice of the people".
- mcpackieh 3y ago> Yes, journalists used to speak truth to power. How do you know that? Certainly it happened sometimes, and it still happens sometimes, but was it ever common? Maybe journalists like to tell stories about the times journalists did really good work and they deliberately leave out all the many more times they didn't. Media tropes of principled gumshoe journalists breaking important stories are probably not representative of what it was typically like.
- avgcorrection 3y ago> Yes, journalists used to speak truth to power. So people say. If you don’t trust journalists then why should you trust their history telling about the-way-things-were?
- unethical_ban 3y agoThis level of cynicism is the cause of the downfall of society. Journalism is as necessary as government. As necessary as speech itself. Particularly in the age of perfect facsimiles of audio/photo/video evidence facilitated by AI, webs of trust and reputable sources of information will be as important as ever. It is dangerous and wrong to insult the profession as an idea. None of this is to say that journalism is flawless any more than government or society is flawless. But it is necessary.
- avgcorrection 3y agoJournalism is necessary in the sense that thought control is necessary in (nominally) democractic societies. See Walter Lippmann and others. (This comment is not an endorsement of that worldview.)
- unethical_ban 3y agoIt is necessary because an informed electorate is a prerequisite for successful democracy.
- avgcorrection 3y agoYou got the propaganda line down pat.
- unethical_ban 3y agoYour intellectual weakness begins to show when you can't craft an argument or admit when your opponent makes a point.
- avgcorrection 3y agoYou didn’t craft an argument. You just made a statement/assertion. Do you get to be lazy simply because your statement is the conventional wisdom? While I don’t get the same privilege? A premise of your assertion—that one lives in a democracy—fails in the case of the US (a popular country I hear) since a Princeton study shows that there is zero correlation between the policy preferences of 90% of Americans and the policies that are actually enacted. But the Walter Lippmann sense of propaganda is still relevant since the News is meant to herd the beliefs of that Political Class—the top 10%. See for example the book Manufacturing Consent.
- unethical_ban 3y agoTo state that the US isn't an effective democracy doesn't counter the argument that journalism as a mechanism for an informed populace is necessary for an effective democracy. It seems what I'm saying is "proper journalism is important" and I can't tell if you're saying "we don't have proper journalism in the US" or "There is no such thing as effective journalism".