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Home Journalism Doesn't Exist

Journalism Doesn't Exist

Scrolling through my feed, I see the title of a New Yorker piece, "Does Journalism Have a Future?" And then I keep on going, knowing exactly what's in it without having to read it.

That's true of most media products.

Journalism doesn't have a future. It doesn't even have a present. 

Journalism isn't the opposition research, hit pieces, narcissistic blogging, conspiracy theories and viral scandal manufacturing, with its satellites of hot takes, that passes for journalism these days.

Those are the eviscerated lifeless organs of journalism.

There are still individual journalists, but there's no profession. And there hasn't been one in a while. It's hard to know exactly when the line was crossed. Was it Woodward and Bernstein, the Pentagon Papers, Bill Clinton, Dan Rather, Obama's media entourage?

It's hard to know and it doesn't really matter. You don't need to know exactly when Rome fell when you're standing in the rubble.

Why Rome fell is equally obvious.

It isn't just politics. Though that's a big part of the answer. 

Biased people can be journalists. Liars can be journalists. Con artists, extremists and otherwise unhinged people can be journalists.

What happened though was that the different functions that journalism performed were subdivided, and those that were useful were diverted to serve private causes and agendas, while those that weren't died.

Imagine a police department that only protected the homes of powerful politicians while ignoring everyone else. There would eventually be no difference between them and hired goons except their insistence that they have noble principles and serve an important function.

It's not just the corruption. Journalists have often been corrupt. It's the loss of professional functionality. 
Journalists, like those hired goons, no longer occupy a distinct professional class. They're a subset of political operations. And the ones that don't occupy even worse roles or are dying out.

Technology, cultural changes and political extremism have all played a role in creating that reality. And it's the future.  

It's also the present.

Comments

  1. "Journalism" is telling a story about real people and events in a way that supports the leftist agenda.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel- many thanks for another excellent article. I came across your work a few years ago and have been a fan ever since. Your essays and articles are always spot on and well written. I try to spread the wealth to other blogs that I visit- it's most important that readers be informed of the truth, regardless of how unpleasant it may be.

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  3. Anonymous22/1/19

    G-d willing someone brings it back.

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  4. .... hard to know exactly when the line was crossed ....

    My money says it was crossed by the Washington Post via its subversive/espionage activities involving an even-then already-long-corrupted DoJ/FBI and via that couple of political hacks cum shorthand typists, Bernstein and Woodward.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous22/1/19

    The difference between reporters and the monkey chained to the calliope while the man churns the handle to grind out the tune is the name of the doctor who treats them for their fleas.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous22/1/19

    We can't tell the press what to print or what not to. We hope the press will act responsibly,
    but when they don't, there ain't a lot we can do about it. We can't have people going around leaking stuff for
    their own reason. It ain't legal, and worse than that, by God, it ain't right.

    ADA Wells

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  7. It is not all, but most "journalists", are merely democrat apparatchiks. My meaning for that is that most mainstream spokesholes, news readers, and so called "reporters", are no more that communist (socialist) propagandists for the left. In my mind this loses any protections that they somehow think they are due.

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  8. Anonymous22/1/19

    Beyond the OBVIOUS STRONG POLITICAL BIAS of our "journalists", neither do they provide the basic service expected (well SHOULD BE expected) of actually researching and describing the essential "facts" of a story - think minimally of the "who, what, when and why (OK, subjective)" issues. Even at the "sports reporting level" I sometimes have to wonder what game they were playing.

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  9. It just dawned on me, I haven't read a newspaper in at least eleven years. It works so much better getting it from the horses mouth.

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  10. Superb obituary for the propagandists claiming constitutional protection. Enemy of the People is an appropriate epitaph.

    ReplyDelete
  11. If you don't have the journalist credentials and yet want to "printed" as a "reliable source" just post online what ever you wish. all the present day print media is to outright theft material from blogs online.

    ReplyDelete

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