22 Replies to “Not Waiting For The Asteroid”

  1. Well Gee…That explains everything. Moving on to driving with your eyes closed leads to a more accidents, after a long professional study.
    All I can say is statements of the obvious do have a place in society because people are oblivious to such things.

  2. I think the question should be, Why are they?
    Are they so thoroughly brainwashed in J-school That they cannot think for themselves? Are they just too lazy to do any legwork and investigate all angles of the piece they are working on?
    I have met a few of these so called journalist most of them are quite arrogant. They seem to think that whatever they write must be the truth because they wrote it, so you must believe it without question because they are the professional writers after all.
    Sometimes it is nice to remind them that Stephen King is also a professional writer. He has been read by millions of more people than these hacks will ever be read by. I like King and have read most of his works, but I sure as heck don’t believe in Killer Clowns living in the sewers. And I don’t believe everything I read in the newspapers.

  3. “Most journalists take a number of psychology, sociology, political science, and humanities courses during their early years in college. Unfortunately, these courses have long served as ideological training programs—ignoring biological sources of self-serving, corrupt, and criminal behavior for a number of reasons, including lack of scientific training; postmodern, antiscience bias; and well-intentioned, facts-be-damned desire to have their students view the world from an egalitarian perspective. Instead, these disciplines ram home the idea that troubled behavior can be fixed through expensive socialist programs that, coincidentally, provide employment opportunities for graduates of the social sciences.”
    Interesting generalizations, true in many instances.
    My own belief, which isn’t in conflict with the above, is that journalism began it’s long march downhill with the opening of the first professional schools and faculties of journalism.

  4. MJ,
    I concur. Journalism should never have been turned into a profession where a degree in it was demanded.
    The qualifications should be the ability to write combined with degrees in whatever you happen to be covering (or better yet, no degree but lots on hands-on experience.)
    Right now, you have people who have no expertise in anything other than stringing words together. The content of those words is missing.
    What qualifies a journalist to speak on any issue other than other journalists?
    Combine that with the marxist propaganda instilled in j-school and journalists just aren’t worth listing to on any subject.

  5. I’d second MJ’s statement about journalism going sour when you could get a degree in it. Journalists have always been scoundrels (look, I’m speaking as a member of the profession) but at least they were independent scoundrels in the days when you’d have been laughed at if you applied for a newsroom job by trumpeting your academic qualifications. I’m probably among the last generation of journalists who entered the profession with indifferent post-secondary qualifications, which I abandoned because I preferred writing to being told how to write. Experience – hard-won, over years of poor pay and tight living – was once valued more than a degree from Ryerson, but those days are mostly over.
    Mostly the problem is that quality of writing is now less valuable than reliability; even spelling and grammar are of tertiary importance, and fact-checking is a distant fourth. Producing acceptable copy on deadline is more valued than troublesome talent, and in the shrinking bureaucracy of the newspaper, talent is seen as a threat. Then, of course, there’s political reliability, which no one will talk about, except in nasty little “crypto-fascist forums” like this one. (sarcastic wink inserted for the ironically challenged)
    Now that the whole business is in freefall, the subject is finally being debated, but only now that the stakes have gotten so low that the damage is much less palpable. For some of us, it’s a case of too little, too late.

  6. My brother took political science in college and then applied for a job as a writer for a small newspaper.
    When he was told he had the job, he asked -‘Why did you hire me instead of a journalism major?’.
    The answer – it’s easier to teach a political science major to write than to teach a journalism major to think.
    How true!

  7. “at least they were independent scoundrels”
    I’m grateful you posted that, because at times i think i must have exaggerated, or possibly imagined, that state of mind. I left that field about twenty five years ago, but even then I worked with people who seem primarily motivated by a desire to be a smart ass and/or cause trouble for important people of any persuasion. I can’t imagine what the response would have been had I started talking about our responsibility to society over a couple of beers.
    Degrees were starting to be a requirement, but the social worker attitude hadn’t taken root yet.

  8. Journalism, like education, IMNSHO is subject to self-selection as well as selection by the academic faculties.
    I recall an associate treading through the mine-field of that academic selection…..he noted those with “unacceptable ideology” getting removed at mid-terms because of voiced opinions on sensitive subjects…..crime, gun control, nuclear power etc….to which AGW is now added.

  9. So our suspicions are confirmed. MSM journalism is a dumping ground for all the unproductive social activists colleges churn out of the humanities courses.
    Certainly explains the Star and CBC.

  10. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s quite interesting to find out what kids are being taught, and how they think.
    My two daughters are quite the ddlittle socialists – after having absorbed all of their school lessons
    They may come around with time – but it’s a surprise they think that way given my ideology, but no surprise given their educational marinade.

  13. Common Cents: “Most Americans are Democrats, so why wouldn’t most journalists reflect that?”
    Wrong. Most Americans – members of political parties and independents taken together — are conservative. Polls show this repeatedly. And more are Republicans than are Democrats.
    Back to the main topic: Some posters above seem to think that journalism school teaches people how to write. That’s wrong too. What they learn is the journalism “technique.” That’s how fifth-raters like Krista Erikson (for easy example) could “rise” to the position she now holds.

  14. “…I know that large groups of very intelligent people can fall into a collective delusion that what they are doing in certain areas is the right thing, when it’s actually not the right thing at all.”
    Journalism is just one of the more visible examples.

  15. A journalist friend gave me amother angle on this”
    “Most of us ended up in journalism because we couldn’t pass a grade eight math exam.”
    The lack of critical thinking ability of innumerate people is not inconsistent with the theme of the article.

  17. I’m sorry, was that a surprise?
    Do you have a number for the Canadian journalists who are Libs and worse?

  18. couldn’t be. like hell it couldn’t. i wrote years ago, don’t know who i stole it from, that the media vote 87 percent democrat. i’ll bet they write 87 percent favourable about dem’s. har de har har.

  19. “Most of us ended up in journalism because we couldn’t pass a grade eight math exam.”
    Too true, junkie, too true. And don’t think I couldn’t truthfully exclude myself.

  20. The lack of critical thinking ability of innumerate people is not inconsistent with the theme of the article.
    Posted by: political junkie at 1:32 PM
    this also applies to other “professions”, such as teaching, social work, many (most) government employees

  21. True or false this Kenyan BC will change nothing…
    Remember those potentially most affected by it’s possible veracity are from Chicago……
    They would nuke Kenya to suppress it….

  22. Paulie
    Do you have a number for the Canadian journalists who are Libs and worse?
    Around 90%. We have a whole public broadcasting system paied tax dollars for basicaly news by Communists. Even our so caqllede Conservative papers have been left heavey with Journalism students who don’t even know the world events of the l;ast 10 years. They do have socialist dogama down pat though.
    JMO

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