The collapse of America's media elite. What qualifications exactly, to be a journalist?

worldnetdaily ^ | August 25, 2004 | hugh hewitt

[dennisw]

John Hindrocket writes for the blog Powerline and this past week he raised the "Emperor's New Clothes" question abut the mainstream media.

 

But what qualifications, exactly, does it take to be a journalist? What can they do that we can't? Nothing. Generally speaking, they don't know any more about primary data and raw sources of information than we do – often less. Their general knowledge is often inadequate. Their superior resources should allow them to carry out investigations far beyond what we amateurs can do. But the reality is that the mainstream media rarely use those resources.

Too many journalists are bored, biased and lazy. And we bloggers are not dependent on our own resources or those of a few amateurs. We can get information from tens of thousands of individuals, many of whom have exactly the knowledge that journalists could (but usually don't) expend great effort to track down – to take just one recent example, the passability of the Mekong River at the Vietnam-Cambodian border during the late 1960s.

 

I have been both a lawyer and law professor for two decades and a TV-radio-print journalist for 15 years of those 20. It takes a great deal more intelligence and discipline to be the former than to be the latter, which is why the former usually pays a lot more than the latter. It is no surprise to me, then, when lawyers and law professors like those at Powerline and Instapundit prove to be far more adept at exposing the "Christmas in Cambodia" lie and other Kerry absurdities than old-school journalists.

The big advantage is in research skills, of course, and in an eye for inconsistencies which make or break cases and arguments. Lawyers turned amateur journalists are going to be much better at it than time-serving scribblers, and even non-lawyer bloggers with superior research skills – think Captain Ed, Tom McGuire and Polipundit – are going to run rings around "pros" who aren't in a hurry to bring down their favored candidate.

They will be assisted in their effort by the full-time labors of "new media" pros like Jim Geraghty and John McIntyre. The only difference between professional and amateur journalists is that the former get paid to practice their trade. As with athletes, the purer effort comes with the amateurs, though some of the pros keep their ideals front and center.

The late Michael Kelly, who would appear on my radio program every Wednesday before he left on his last assignment to Iraq, rejected the idea of journalism as a profession, as there was no licensing body. The child of journalists and among the most respected journalists of our age, Kelly often described journalism as a "craft" to me, one in which there were both excellent and terrible practitioners.

The bloggers of the center-right who have exposed the Kerry Kurtz Chronicles over the past three weeks are much better craftsmen than their paid counterparts at the big papers. They found they key lie – Kerry's many and self-contradicting tales of daring-do across the Cambodian border and his use of those lies for political advancement – and researched it and exposed it while their paid brethren ignored the big story because it was inconvenient for their candidate's chances.

The willingness to push the story forward regardless of whom it injured used to be the mark of journalists at the big papers. It isn't any more. And for a long time to come, the complicity of the old media "reporters" in not reporting Kerry's lies will be an exhibit in the history of the collapse of credibility of America's media elite.

[A Navy Vet]

"But what qualifications, exactly, does it take to be a journalist?"

Apparently, none.

[FastCoyote]

I'm a mechanical engineer who did PR work for the American Nuclear industry on Yucca Mountain. Why wouldn't a person like me be a better reporter on nuclear affairs than some numnuk journalist who has never looked at a differential equation, nuclear decay paths or materials data sheets?

My point is, many on Free Republic have specific expertise that just crushes the old media. So it isn't just "lawyers" who can think critically and expose the lies.

[ladyinred]

These days to be a journalist, the only qualifications needed are to graduate from a liberal Ivy league college vote for the most liberal candidates, and be sure and show hatred for all things conservative/moderate/patriotic.

[JoJo Gunn]

This has been on my mind the last couple of days as the question comes up as "just who the heck do we pajama wearers think we are?" from the elitists.

This set of blatantly biased "guidelines" came out from the Society of Professional Journalists soon after the attacks of September the 11th. Whatever happened to just the facts?

(I've highlighted in bold a couple of things that always jumped out to me as bias against the Right).

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source link

Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic and Religious Profiling
Diversity > Guidelines for Countering Profiling

On Oct. 6 at its National Convention in Seattle, the Society of Professional Journalists passed a resolution urging members and fellow journalists to take steps against racial profiling in their coverage of the war on terrorism and to redouble their commitment to:

• Use language that is informative and not inflammatory;
• Portray Muslims, Arabs and Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in the richness of their diverse experiences;
• Seek truth through a variety of voices and perspectives that help audiences understand the complexities of the events in Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Guidelines

Visual images

1. Seek out people from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds when photographing Americans mourning those lost in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
2. Seek out people from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds when photographing rescue and other public service workers and military personnel.
3. Do not represent Arab Americans and Muslims as monolithic groups. Avoid conveying the impression that all Arab Americans and Muslims wear traditional clothing.
4. Use photos and features to demystify veils, turbans and other cultural articles and customs.

Stories

1. Seek out and include Arabs and Arab Americans, Muslims, South Asians and men and women of Middle Eastern descent in all stories about the war, not just those about Arab and Muslim communities or racial profiling.
2. Cover the victims of harassment, murder and other hate crimes as thoroughly as you cover the victims of overt terrorist attacks.
3. Make an extra effort to include olive-complexioned and darker men and women, Sikhs, Muslims and devout religious people of all types in arts, business, society columns and all other news and feature coverage, not just stories about the crisis.
4. Seek out experts on military strategies, public safety, diplomacy, economics and other pertinent topics who run the spectrum of race, class, gender and geography.
5. When writing about terrorism, remember to include white supremacist, radical anti-abortionists and other groups with a history of such activity.
6. Do not imply that kneeling on the floor praying, listening to Arabic music or reciting from the Quran are peculiar activities.
7. When describing Islam, keep in mind there are large populations of Muslims around the world, including in Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, India and the United States. Distinguish between various Muslim states; do not lump them together as in constructions such as "the fury of the Muslim world."
8. Avoid using word combinations such as "Islamic terrorist" or "Muslim extremist" that are misleading because they link whole religions to criminal activity. Be specific: Alternate choices, depending on context, include "Al Qaeda terrorists" or, to describe the broad range of groups involved in Islamic politics, "political Islamists." Do not use religious characterizations as shorthand when geographic, political, socioeconomic or other distinctions might be more accurate.
9. Avoid using terms such as "jihad" unless you are certain of their precise meaning and include the context when they are used in quotations. The basic meaning of "jihad" is to exert oneself for the good of Islam and to better oneself.
10. Consult the Library of Congress guide for transliteration of Arabic names and Muslim or Arab words to the Roman alphabet. Use spellings preferred by the American Muslim Council, including "Muhammad," "Quran," and "Makkah ," not "Mecca."
11. Regularly seek out a variety of perspectives for your opinion pieces. Check your coverage against the five Maynard Institute for Journalism Education fault lines of race and ethnicity, class, geography, gender and generation.
12. Ask men and women from within targeted communities to review your coverage and make suggestions.

Web resources on this topic:

• Informational Resources on Arab-Americans, the Arab World and Islam
• 100 Questions and Answers about Arab-Americans: A Journalist’s Guide
• The Quran online (1 or 2)
• The South Asian Journalists Association provides a stylebook, sources and a roundup of coverage for journalists.
• Newswatch is a site dedicated to diversity in journalism, with commentary on media performance. It is a project of the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism of San Francisco State University and a collaboration between the Native American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.
• Reuters explains its policy on the word "terrorist."
• Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
• The Religion Newswriters Association maintains an extensive set of resources on religion and covering religion.
• The mission of the Anti-Defamation League is to combat anti-Semitism andbigotry of all kinds. One section of its Web site details how ADL leaders have responded to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab-American violence.

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• Nothing foreign about Islam in America