In the late 90s I spent several months working at the School of Journalism at Columbia University in Manhattan. My work was not academic, but blue collar communications work. During this period I had the opportunity to speak with many different students. Whenever I asked why they had chosen journalism their answer was invariably, “I want to make a difference.”
If you watch the game show, “Jeopardy” when they have those sharp college kids on, the ones that are studying journalism, when asked “Why?” always answer the same.
It seems that the main goal of these future journalists is NOT to witness and write the first draft of history, rather they wish to INFLUENCE the consumers of their product to agree with whatever ideology they wish to promote.
Yup
Part of why i was on paper in college was many of my friends were in journalism and were going after spots on the paper to build up their experience before applying for real jobs later on...
Many later dropped out of their career fields entirely because their own liberal naivete was shattered when they spent a few years seeing what really went on in an actual newsroom.
By age 20 I was listening to Rush L. and already saw what was going on in the college paper newsroom, they were still idealists and wanted to make a difference, they all thought smearing conservatives/Republicans was how they would make that difference, and most were women and feminists and the media went severely gynocentric
They had rude awakenings. They’d write a straight article, then their editors would modify it and put their political twist on it. The ones with more independent thinking left, they didn’t want their names on the articles after the agenda changes the editors applied.