Blahg

5 July 2013

Hey, Matt Taibbi, I disagree. All journalism is not advocacy journalism.

I've been hearing it a lot. It started with the proliferation of blogging platforms and bloggers. "There is no such thing as objectivity." "Journalists are people, too." "How can you expect a journalist to not be an advocate for their own view?"

Well, from my point of view, journalism is a profession. You go into it because you want to inform your readers. You want to give them the whole story, which means you very well might uncover some unpleasant truths. And those truths very well might conflict with your own - personal - views, opinions, and impressions.

A real journalist goes into a story open to whatever might come about. If you go in with a personal bias - an advocate's point of view - then how can you really get to the truth?

Maybe, just maybe, that's a huge part of why the media is so fragmented these. People want to listen to and read what agrees with their preconceptions. Fox, MSNBC, CNN. Take your pick. Choose what offends your sensibilities the least.

As a result, the populace is becoming more and more ignorant.

In a 27 June 2013 Rolling Stone article (eye rolls, please) Matt Taibbi (more eye rolls, please) wrote:

"All journalism is advocacy journalism. No matter how it's presented, every report by every reporter advances someone's point of view. The advocacy can be hidden, as it is in the monotone narration of a news anchor for a big network like CBS or NBC (where the biases of advertisers and corporate backers like GE are disguised in a thousand subtle ways), or it can be out in the open, as it proudly is with Greenwald, or graspingly with Sorkin, or institutionally with a company like Fox.

"But to pretend there's such a thing as journalism without advocacy is just silly; nobody in this business really takes that concept seriously. 'Objectivity' is a fairy tale invented purely for the consumption of the credulous public, sort of like the Santa Claus myth. Obviously, journalists can strive to be balanced and objective, but that's all it is, striving.

"Try as hard as you want, a point of view will come forward in your story... Any journalist with half a brain knows that the biases of our time are always buried in our coverage."

It's funny how advocacy journalism can so easily drift into borderline-insulting hyperbole.

It's true that I'm employed as a Web developer, but my background is in journalism and my heart will always be there. I was the New York Times or bust student and I couldn't stomach the idea of working for some Podunk newspaper out in the middle of nowhere. That's why I started my own website more than 13 years ago now. This is where I write. This Blahg is my op-ed page.

But I think it's scary how objectivity is being bashed and thrown out the window as a mere fairy tale. Advocacy journalism certainly does have its place and kudos to Taibbi for proclaiming himself as one.

However, the world will always need "old school" journalism that simply gets down to the facts. That's why I loved studying journalism. It wasn't so I could spout off my (perhaps uninformed) opinion. It was so I could go out there and learn something each and every day and get paid doing it!

Gosh. That last sentence sounds like a line right out of Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy.

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1 July 2013

Spotted at a traffic light, fingered into the dirty rear window of an SUV: "YOUR STUPID" - and right below that "AND FAT."

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