Journalism: Not Conflicted Enough

Friday, February 20, 2009

"I am currently in my website developing class. Today, our lesson:
building a blog. I also learned how to adjust my blog's template."

http://mynmi.net/student/clairerock/blog/

Creative Editing Part Deux

"Over the course of the semsester, each of you will post at least five blog entries of 300 to 400 words and at least two links ..."

She hasn't posted yet. Guess Creative Editing also includes Creative Spelling.

http://roessneredit.blogspot.com/

2 things she's right about; bloggers are here to stay and we (the public) need unbiased reporting. How come Journalists feel the need to explain the smallest differences between journalism and blogging but don't seem to understand the difference between reporting and editorializing?

Poor Claire. What a prissy, droning, cliched, kiss-my-professor's-ass little pseudo-essay.
"Indeed, bloggers often knowingly disregard opposing viewpoints on issues of public interest" - well, I'm sure we all get get a kick out of that.
Who invented this "Hack Degree" scam anyway? Claire and her fellow students are being taught "ethical standards and professional integrity", which could simply be covered in a short pamphlet. She clearly isn't learning how to write or observe (to the extent that those things can be taught). Oh, but turning her into a self-important lump of sanctimonious recieved opinion? That they have covered. This will cost her four years (or something) and tens of thousands of dollars. Journalists should simply learn on the job, in a newsroom.

I would make Claire Rock read "Scoop" by Evelyn Waugh.
This is not an original point, sorry, but the brits at least still seem to have a healthy idea of what a journalist is. Sleazy, drunk, vindictive etc. - a kind of snoop. It's self-parodying and not unaffectionate; something to do with the national capacity for self-deprecating irony still being not completely dead (any time now, though). But the yank journalists see themselves as white knights, kingmakers, speakers of Truth to Power - i.e. Woodward and Bernstein. It's so pompous.

Black Mamba said it all.

Claire.. if fair and accurate 'coverage' is what we witness everyday in the MSM, change your major kid.

sarge here now sarge likes a blogger who makes some sense like that josh marshal fellow but the truth ofthe matter is them there bloggers hardly ever have forign corrispondents no mid east desk no chet huntly takin fire from the viet cong durin a broadcast simple truth is most of the stuff on blogs is stolen from the work of real or not so real journalists now sarge thinks this miss kate could remedy the thing by flyin to iraqistan and reporting o nthe success of the surge from outside the green zone fer instance

The Dan Rather documents and the Hezbollah Fauxtography. Just two examples of obvious fraud the MSM refused to cover but were exposed by LGF; some amateur blog.

Stuff it, toots in your fairly accurate file.

sarge, glad you could stop by. You seem well connected in the new administration. Who are we supposed to hate this week? I see that the Politico has a candidate for "Villain of the Week"

"Democrat's New Villain, Eric Cantor"
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19817.html

You better study up on the hate, err I mean talking points and get posting in that imitable style of yours. We are all waiting to see whether he was caught fishing without a license, or whether he ever changed his opinion, which, which we all know, in your eyes, would make him a hypocrite.

Sarge, your point might have been accurate 10 years ago, but it isn't now. The "professionals", don't do those things any more because it costs, them too much money. It is now bloggers (Micheal Yon is an example) who are the embedded combat journalists

'sarge thinks this miss kate could remedy the thing by flyin to iraqistan and reporting o nthe success of the surge from outside the green zone fer instance'

Sarge might have jumped the shark on this post. I have harbored my suspicious for a while that sarge's posts were really parodies of the left, but now I think that it is definitely true. One of the difficulties of parodying the left is that, like Jim Carey as the Riddler, you can never tell if you have gone over the top.

Thanks Kate, I like a good laugh in the am.

That Claire Rock really is quite full of herself.

The world of journalism has found its saviour. heh.

If you want to remain in the dark, read a newspaper.

"Our role as professional journalists in the future will be even more important, as we work to sort out this information and present truthful news to the public."

It's nice to know that in the future journalists will be truthful. Too bad they didn't do it in the past or in the present. They might have garnered more respect.

"Truthful news."

As opposed to?

Garth

Do the journos have a course in fact spinning? That's what happens when they ".....sort out this information and present truthful news to the public".

Claire Rock sounds a tad immature and has a long way to go to catch up to bloggers who get to the truth of the matter.

If the MSM did its job like Ms Rock speaks of, how come the Obama is not back in Chicago making erasers and counting the ballots still in his closet?

And Claire..on your resume make sure you list Journalism Major after, Experienced VHS Head Cleaner and your Lotus 1-2-3 skills.

Bombastic B*llsh*t from a student who made a poor career choice.

You just have to know she was ready to right all the wrongs in the world with her job as a reporter.

yes, i agree.......up to a point Lord blackmamba....

You can tell that Claire has yet to work in the real world of journalism. Claire, when you get a real job, every morning when you go to work you will have a huge battle taking place within your soul. The struggle will be between reporting the facts - fair and balanced - or putting forth your personal agenda.

That is a battle far too often won by journalists' personal agendas.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase "necessity is the mother of invention". Well, the internet has provided a wonderful medium in which clear, accurate and balanced information is accessible to all.

If that was being provided by you so-called journalists, us folks would not need to go and find it elsewhere.

Claire - go work for the NY Times and see how far your lofty levels of objectivity and integrity take you. When you work for an outfit that has an "agenda" like does the Times, no matter how lofty your standards, they will fall to those of your masters.

You presently live in a "theoretical" world. Good luck when you step into the real world of journalism. If you can hang on to your lofty standards, you will not like what you see in your profession.

If anyone working as a journalist at MSNBC is "award-winning" those who give such awards must surely have a "consolation" award category. I can't imagine anyone over there getting an actual genuine award of any kind.

This girlie's essay here illustrates THE problem with university. I had this problem as a kid, she's got it bad right now.

Lemme lay it out for you. Little Clair says:

"The skills I'm learning at the University of Georgia are crucial to good journalism. The ethical standards and professional integrity my fellow students and I will have as a result of our education will distinguish us from the army of bloggers now posting on the Web."

Translation: 1)University is the place where you learn the secrets of how to do it right.
2)If you didn't go to university, you don't know the secret and besides you're a goof.

My rather extensive experience of universities leaves me with the certain knowledge that it ain't so. The -original- purpose of universities was to pursue Scholarship. Capital "S", baby. People went to the university to hang out with scholars, learn how to be scholars, and do what scholars do: Scholarship. In the sciences that looks like doing experiments, but the experiment is merely and extension of scholarship.

The current purpose of universities is to sucker as many people into taking as many courses as possible, and to ensure this they have created an atmosphere of Credentialism. If you don't take the right courses and pass the right exams, you can't be a X.

Little Clair is going to get her Journalism ticket punched, so she will have the official blessing of the university guild meisters that she's "trained" and able to step into a job. Should she be so lucky to actually get a job, her first discovery will be that she doesn't know JACK about it and will spend about two years un-learning all the "knowledge", "ethics" and "professionalism" she paid all that money to get, and re-learning the actual job. That process is going to HURT.

This is why entry level jobs pay badly, kids. They know you won't be useful for at least a year or two.

Ms. Rock appears to have quite an inflated opinion of herself and her chosen profession. Her diatribe reeks of arrogance, hubris and, of course, stupidity.

The lack of respect that journalists are afforded these days is entirely of their own making.

Phantom - don't forget her comment re ethical standards

People shouldn't wait until University to learn those. Or at least, I sure hope not

Agree with your other observations re University

I drives me nuts when journalists call themselves professionals, like teachers they are not professionals. Unless you have a self-governing body that oversees improper behavior, you are not a profession.
PS. Teachers, you're union doesn't count.

Ask Rush and Mark Steyn their opinion of journalism school.

IMHO, if you want the true facts go to the blogger who put the headline out their. The commentator's usually sort it out and ferret out the truth. The TV and newspapers put out the headline with the journalist's personal take on it.

Like someone said here, it simply cost too much for return on investment to do proper journalistic work involving research to deliver quality news. That's not accounting for bias. The main reason is that not enough people care.

Weak journalism filled with biased editorialising is only moving serious and caring citizens of democracies away from MSM towards blogs. Readership and interest of blogs is not growing, it is just a certain mass of people shifting away from MSM to get better quality news that matters.

MSM is a business, it serves a customer. It is so devoid of depth and analysis now it is almost cartoonish: Just like most of it's client base.

Society is spoiled to the core. Especially North America. I see it and hear it everytime I leave my house. People are asleep. They want instant gratification and do not want to think; especially about issues that might make them suffer. That's why, for example Americans put Obama in the White House: A fairy tale, Hollywood type character.
If he can't deliver a quick fix so that the majority walking zombies/socialist bloodsuckers can go back to their orgy of spending, eating and having a perpetual debauchery of CHEAP comsumerism with steady increase in personal irresponsability, then increasingly and proportional to the amount of suffering, people will start demanding more serious information with in depth analysis from news providers.
Atlas needs to shrug a lot more before this happens though.

I think a journalism degree should be like an MBA. Get a degree in something interesting, work for five years in that profession, learn what's it like to pay bills and taxes and mortgages, then go get a Masters in Journalism.

Then maybe our journalists wouldn't look and sound like wet-behind-the-ears arts majors with a minor in socialism who couldn't meet a payroll if they were backed by Warren Buffet.

"Our commitment to fairness and balance isn't present in all blog "journalism." Indeed, bloggers often knowingly disregard opposing viewpoints on issues of public interest."

Disregard I thought we openly mocked them?

I think if the fair and balance folk of whom she spoke did more fair and balanced reporting there would be much fewer unedited damnable bloggers out there saying what they think.

"But what if thousands - maybe millions - of people are trying to do your job with no expertise, no hard work?"

Kate posting this @2:00 isn't hard work? bull!

I'd like to see the aggregate of this so called professionals work and put it against any decent blogger.

As for this so called expertise I've seen people read the news on TV who don't know the difference between the debt and the annual deficit.

Patooty.... You hit the nail on the head.

".....but don't seem to understand the difference between reporting and editorializing?"

CNN's Rick Sanchez made that same offer to Karl Rove after giving a whole section of time to one of Rove's accusers, former Governor Don Siegelman.

This is the transcript. Coincidentally, it seems that the same offer was made by Wolf Blitzer.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/print_friendly.php?p=Transcript-of-Don-Siegelma-by-Pam-Miles-090309-61.html

rabbit, that is such a great statement.

It would be far better to learn a subject first hand through working in the field, and then learn how to report it; rather than learning creative writing and then picking a field of interest about which to write about which you know little

I have a special thermal reader for newspapers, which only shows the articles that are worth reading. It is a vented metal box with a glass screen on the front. I put in the the newspaper and put some wood on it to hold it down. When it burns anything of importance is supposed to be displayed on the glass screen. So far nothing has been displayed.

mid island mike

yes, i agree.......up to a point Lord blackmamba....
Posted by: john begley at March 11, 2009 9:37 AM

But I suppose we must beg begley for the exact location of that point?

Up to a point, for the most, generally, on balance. at the end of the day, not to put too fine a point on it, the point is ...?

Mr. Begley: That's Lady Mamba of Blackmamba to you.

Is Sarge "new" come back to torture us?
Anyway, re. what he/she/it "wrote": Isn't Kate going to the Middle East soon along with a bunch of other bloggers, including Kathy Shaidle?

Claire is right about this "a willingness to develop new skills amid rapidly changing technologies may be the reason one reporter keeps their job and another gets canned.", but that doesn't only apply to journalism.

Engineers and Designers have been "modernizing" for almost two decades now. IMO we are getting to a point where those with "modern" educations will surpass those with more experience who don't have the "modern" training. Those in the 40-60 yr range are really struggling to adapt as it seems the format we work in changes every year or two, and this is accelerating.

If print media is just now thinking about modernizing they are way behind the curve.

Definition of a smug journalist:
"The public will not be better informed by untrained amateurs than by qualified reporters trained in such writing for the mainstream media."

"The ethical standards and professional integrity my fellow students and I will have as a result of our education will distinguish us from the army of bloggers"

HAHAHAHAHA

What poor, as in soon to be unemployed in a field that's emploding, little Claire doesn't understand is that universities regardless of how grim employment is for a degree won't stop taking the tuition and cranking out the useless.

Too many little Claires during the economic fat years made very bad choices in careers that will now cost them.

The poor kid probably thinks her little rant is a resume builder. The real irony of poor little Claire is that she wasn't following the news very well when out of the classroom. Her industry was in a pre-coma mode when she was a freshman.

True enough Penny. As an adult student, my first priority was choosing a career in a field that required people. I remember the first conversation with the head of my department, I asked " What percentage of grads find jobs in this field locally?" to which he said "100%, if the effort is there.". After that conversation I paid my tuition and got right to work.

It's funny listening to an arts major tell me about professionalism.

You wouldn't last a second in med school, kid.

“Our commitment to fairness and balance isn't present in all blog "journalism." Indeed, bloggers often knowingly disregard opposing viewpoints on issues of public interest.”

The young woman is of course full of idealism, what fairness and balance, maybe she reads newspapers without any skepticism at all.

“But many feature banter - often biased or untruthful - that skews public understanding.”

Sounds like description of the current media. Sad part is, the student actually believes that.

“Even well-educated citizens don't have time to look over the shoulders of public officials.”

If even well-educated don’t have time, the less educated must be at total loss, apparently. Now why would this have anything to do with education?

“The increasingly chaotic nature of the Internet - unedited, uncontrollable - could cripple our profession, if not challenged by those of us who will be embarking on careers in it.”

Now she is getting the drift.

"........a self-important lump of sanctimonious recieved opinion?"

Har!

Unless of course she's going for IRONY!

I somehow doubt that though..................

Here's CBC's own Allison Smith in what might be the most biased piece of journalism I have ever seen:

http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup_nlp.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/vsu/wmv-hi-1200/smith-limbaugh090310.wmv

They don't even feign objectivity anymore.

Jeeze .... wouldn't this be a good time to remind folks of the "uneducated" masses who frequent THIS blog?

OMMAG

*****Jeeze .... wouldn't this be a good time to remind folks of the "uneducated" masses who frequent THIS blog?****

sshhhhh, your post made me drop my janitor's broom when I read......erm... when my dog read it to me:-)))))

This is so condescending.

“But many feature banter - often biased or untruthful - that skews public understanding.”

Skews Public understanding?
She's now a self appointed thought police?
No wonder they feel free to stifle our free speech.

NOTE to j-students or laid of journos.

Why this blog?
Until this moment
I have been forced
to listen while media
and politicians alike
have told me
"what Canadians think".
In all that time they
never once asked.

This is just the voice
of an ordinary Canadian
yelling back at the radio -
"You don't speak for me."

(had to bring that right out there as they'll miss plot line.)

Any chance I get, I explain blogs to folks who yet don't know that much about blogs. These are the people who express to me that they think the "NEWS" is usually full of crap. Then I give them blog links. :)

One can also be totally unbiased about it just by giving the 'blog of the year awards site' link, then they find their own way.

" Sarge, your point might have been accurate 10 years ago, but it isn't now. The "professionals", don't do those things any more because it costs, them too much money. It is now bloggers (Micheal Yon is an example) who are the embedded combat journalists"

sarge here sarge wonders if yer a moron of the 138 journalists and and cameramen killed along with another 40 media assistants in iraqistan fer instance in the past 8 years, 7 was imbedded and 131 was not tells a story about who was in the sh%t and who wasnt dont it? 49 of them journos worked for foriegn news orgs but the most of them what was killed while imbedded was 7 obviously safer to be embedded as the US military somehow has kilt 16 unimbedded journos. strangly them 'murikans is better at snuffing americna news agency journos than them from iraqistan of even al jahira. of them americna and brit services well knight-rider lost some (at least 3 kilt by american troops), BBC (one kilt by american troops) ,reuters (at least 6 kilt by US troops) CNN, Time magazine, ABC ( at least 3 kilt by american troops), AP, new york times and a bunch or euro trash journos from german polands spain ect ect. worse to be a iraqi journos and the alleged 4th estate of freedom no sarge would point out the obvious them imbeded journos and bloggers only get to see what theys allowed to see and thems that aint imbedded finds themselves dead real often when in the vacinity of american troops.

ps micheal yon is a vain glorious moron