Journalists - Professionals?
Tue., September 5, 02:44 PM
This entry was sparked by one of Denver Doug’s posts. I was going to try to drop a comment in his recalcitrant guestbook (thank you so much, Andrew!), but then I realized I had more than just a comment.
Before I was married, I spent several years working for a company publication, what was commonly known as a “house organ.” It wasn’t just a dinky little newsletter, but a newspaper with a national circulation of about 75,000. Nevertheless, we, as a group, took a lot of flak from “real” journalists, who felt that house organs existed only to spread the company word.
Since my boss was active in the various organizations of internal communicators and mentored some of the younger editors, I learned something about the subject as well. I’m sensitive to the nuances of managed news, to the attitudes sometimes conveyed by a single word.
When we got married, the manner of scheduling the evening television news was different. Local stations ran the news at a different time from the network. That made it possible to hear it twice, or to choose NBC (Huntley and Brinkley) at 6:30 and CBS (Cronkite) at 7. (Husband always likes to hear the news more than once.) It was basically the same news, you understand, from the same sources; yet I have the kind of memory that would catch changes. I did hear differences and, as I wrote to my old boss, even “real” journalists seemed to be managing the news a little.
I think that was when I first began questioning what journalists tell me. I still trusted them, but I was aware that one network was leaning more toward the government’s assessment of Vietnam, while the other leaned toward ending the war. It never occurred to me that either the networks or the sponsors were managing the news. It was more like the editorial opinions of the anchors were creeping into it.
As a regular reader of Time magazine in those days, I already knew there was a fine line between fact and opinion. Time’s little snickers constantly questioned the status quo as compared to the editors’ point of view. And that was accepted.
By the mid-90‘s, I had had enough. The only news story seemed to be whether Bill Clinton could keep his fly zipped up. Not only was that no longer news, but it was still filling half the available news space. Time asked its readers whether they were tired of stories about Monica Lewinsky. The survey showed that most readers were more than sated with the so-called stories, but the magazine continued to run the articles. I canceled my subscription.
Although there are still ethical journalists working in the field, I find fewer all the time. “It’s a business,” y’know. Don’t run articles that will offend the advertisers or subscribers. Especially the advertisers, because “everyone knows” the subscribers aren’t that smart. Whenever I read or hear some reporter telling only half the story (I’ve mentioned this in the past), because they’re only looking at their own point of view, then I know that some people who call themselves journalists aren’t so smart either.
