journalism
okay, I admit it, I don't know what journalism is. apparently it's different from news reporting, especially news reporting on television. but knowing what something is not is not knowing what it is. for instance, you know that motorcycling is not driving a car, but - trust me! - unless you ride a motorcycle day in, day out, no matter the weather, then you don't know what motorcycling is. okay, after a little research, I have an idea of how journalism differs from news reporting. as you know, news reporting seems - and I honestly say seems because I do not know the truth of it - to largely involve taking down and repeating what so-and-so says, or reading and repeating what a handout says. in other words, news reporting seems to involve little thinking and no fact-checking. (see me raise my hands and shake my head. I cannot say it is this way, only that it appears to be this way.) I think journalism distinguishes itself by actually learning what's behind the handout or the soundbite. I think journalism actually tries to dig out facts and occurrences that the handout and soundbite cover up. now, the "facts" for journalists may also be what other documents say, or what other participants say, but at least they have a fuller story, a behind-what's-shown story. news reporting shows the mayor without a hair out of place and wearing his shiny suit and his shiny shoes and lifting a shovelful of gravel and smiling at cameras, and tells us that the mayor said his administration has built eleven hundred miles of streets in just two years. journalism finds out and reports that the mayor's administration has granted contracts to build streets to exactly fourteen contractors, and nine of them share one co-owner, who just happens to be the mayor's brother. news reporting quotes Our Leader as saying that the war is holy and must be continued until the infidels and heretics are eliminated. journalism shows us that the infidels believe in the same god we do, only the infidels spell his name with an i and we spell it with a y, and further shows us that the heretics only differ from the orthodox by thinking that Our Leader must come from a different family. no wonder journalists are thought to be dangerous. and no wonder that our founding fathers included special protections for journalists and journalism. if the incoming president actually manages to get rid of journalists and journalism, we will be the poorer for it. I would say we will be the more ignorant for it, but many of you apparently think that is a virtue.
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