True, no one is forcing people to be reporters just as they aren't forcing people into high finance. Nevertheless, there is a reasonable expectation that people who choose to be reporters will use their freedom to do good, not to do bad. I think it is worth applauding when a reporter does good. It doesn't happen often enough.
Agreed. But my point was that the assumption that reporters do good - that journalism is objective - is a prejudice. It is "a vagrant opinion with no visible means of support."I think it is worth applauding when a reporter does good. It doesn't happen often enough.I go so far as to say that the claim of journalistic objectivity is a form of censorship. If faced with an open-and-shut case of politically tendentious journalism - such as the 2004 60 Minutes hit piece on President Bush's TANG service record - all journalists self-censor. None of them durst say the obvious truths that
The refusal of any organ of Big Journalism to point out these facts and conclude that the "Killian memos" were fraudulent partisan hit by CBS News is a mark not of the "objectivity" but of the solidarity of Big Journalism.
- Mr. Bush was not running as a war hero but as a sitting president standing on his record (so the idea that his service record of thirty years ago was relevant was not "objectivity" but a John Kerry POV),
- The "Killian Memos" were not originals and therefore it is patently impossible to verify the authenticity of the putative "signatures" by the (conveniently) long-dead Col. Killian,
- No chain of custody links the "Killian memos" to the personal effects of Col. Killian. And the quality of the copies of the "Killian Memos" is quite poor - indicating that each was itself made from a copy and that that copy was also made from a copy of the putative original. The poor quality of these copies obscures the putative signatures, and that lowers the standard of proof of authenticity for the credulous, but it also flies in the face of the fact that if these memo existed at all they must have been closely held. Copies made of copies of copies would not exist.
- And finally, the fact that Microsoft Word, which was developed long after the putative dates of the "Killian memos," does a lot of easily observable things to facilitate and optimize the production of a memo. The conceit that the "Killian memos" were produced on some other device than Microsoft Word without producing any artifact in any of them which suggests that any of them were not produced by Microsoft Word operating in its default settings is a fantastic leap of faith.
That is where we "violently agree."
A very common assumption...very dangerous but very common.
You know, I would be happy if they would just try to be good reporters and stop trying to "do good". I think they should just try to keep to the "who, what, when, where and how" and be done with it. It is possible to do that and sound important I believe.