Blahg

27 October 2019

I'm appalled by the state of journalism today.

People are being ripped off every single day. Shocker. Every day there are victims of identity theft, petty theft and all manor of crimes leading up to murder.

But every single day, people are also being ripped off by people professing to be journalists.

People watch certain TV programs, subscribe to certain publications, receive certain newsletters — all with the expectation they are receiving "journalism" and, ostensibly, they are receiving the "truth."

Before I proceed, here's some background to consider: I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Concurrently, I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. After completing a Master of Science in International Business, I taught myself web development. I taught myself photography. On my own, I've learned to speak remedial French and Japanese. I'm also on a crusade to learn how to play U2's One on my Fender guitar.

In short, I am not stupid.

And I loved that journalism program at CU. It fed my naturally inquisitive and curious mind. It was about going out and learning something new every day. It was about challenging my first impressions. It was about exploring all the possibilities of a story. It was never, ever about persuading people to believe what I believe personally. If anything, what I believed was subject to being proven wrong.

After college, I had a New York Times or bust mindset. I wasn't interested in working for a small community newspaper, the kind that gets delivered once a week and goes straight to the garbage (or, nowadays, the recycle bin). Rather than taking that path, I stood up my own website so I could publish whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Things have worked out well; the day job has afforded me the opportunity to see the world and pursue plenty of dreams and then I write about them and — as time permits — publish stuff in the mighty, mighty Mattopia Times. As a bonus, working in the digital space also feeds that curious mind of mine; there's always something new to learn as technology perpetually advances at an ever-increasingly rapid pace.

Here's the thing: real journalism is not easy. Real journalism is not advocacy. Real journalism is a discipline that requires a level of integrity and transparency that has been all but decimated in today's media. It doesn't matter if it's CNN (I used to like that network; Jeff Zucker's ruined it), Fox News, NBC (Matt Lauer was paid millions for his junk journalism and it fed an undeserving monster ego, encouraging all manner of nightmarish conduct); it doesn't matter. If all sides aren't honestly being evaluated — without all that ridiculous partisan vitriol — it's not really journalism. It's not even something that can be described as remotely intelligent.

It's crap. "Gawd awful," as one of my J-school instructors would say. It's actually performing a public disservice.

It's all summed up in one word that is completely absent from today's news discourse: OBJECTIVITY. Opinion is not not journalism; that's an editorial. Writing by starting from a place of personal bias is not journalism, it's advocacy. Classic journalism is not an act of persuasion, it's the propagation of balanced, researched, vetted information.

I cancelled cable TV seven years ago (I was an early cord cutter and I don't miss it); I've long since stopped receiving the Denver Post and I get the digital New York Times less and less for the veracity of the content and more for the technical savvy of its execution and presentation. That said, the inputs are everywhere and they're persistent. Facebook, Twitter, broadcast news, e-newsletters from all kinds of sources. For example, I stopped getting Rolling Stone the magazine years ago (too little music coverage), but I get their daily e-newsletter. Still, very little music coverage but there is a steady, incessant drumbeat of a single-minded political point of view. There isn't even an attempt to present more than one side of anything political. Similarly, so many other outlets veer out of their lane to dabble in political discourse driven by an agenda and people accept it all as fact.

I know I'm not getting the full story from any one given source. When I travel and check out the state of CNN and Fox News, I can't help but figure the truth lies somewhere in between. Unfortunately, I'm afraid most people don't appreciate or understand how they're being played by virtually all of the media outlets, which cater to reinforcing a view rather than exploring all views.

I've been criticized for not keeping my subscription to the Post, that I'm not "supporting" journalism and as a journalist I should be — somehow, so the logic goes — ashamed of myself. Problem is, the Post was barely worth the Sunday coupons a long time ago. Simply subscribing to the Post isn't an act of "supporting" journalism. Most of the paper is regurgitated content from syndicated services. Precious little — if any at all — is genuine, hard-core, unbiased investigative reporting at the local level. Right out of the gate, old-school newspapers stumbled when faced with the age of digital communications. They blew it then and they never recovered.

It's all leading to a remarkably underserved public that fears opposing views, that relies on "safe spaces" for protection from any degree of opposition. How can a person living in 2019 be the least bit surprised — let alone fully outraged — by the notion of foreign bad actors interfering in U.S. elections? Of course it happens. And of course the U.S. participates in the same behavior outside of U.S. borders. Of course there's misinformation out there. Of course Facebook and Twitter and virtually every other outlet to some degree or another shares misinformation — some actively participate in it to further drive their preferred narrative.

It's appalling. Tampering, misinformation — history is full of meddling. Anybody ever heard of "spying," for Pete's sake? Don't people know it's the world's second oldest profession?

History. There's part of the problem. It's not being studied, it's not being taught correctly. Instead, it's being rewritten. There's a mortifying ignorance in regard to history and the base reality of how the world works. And that comment's coming from a guy who hated studying history in college; it wasn't until I started traveling — and observing first-hand how the world really works — that I grew to appreciate history. Now I read history books and biographies almost exclusively. There's no time for fiction when reality is so much more interesting.

Don't even get me started on the concepts of freedom of speech and privacy. Don't get me started on the embarrassing double standards of major league sports and the manufactured optics of taking a stand (or not, in the case of China) when it comes to human rights violations.

Even Mike Bloomberg's out there talking about how the riots in Hong Kong are in response to environmental issues. Seriously? And nobody's calling him out on the real catalyst — the human rights issues in China?

I've intentionally stayed away from "hot button" political topics on this site. I don't even "like" or otherwise acknowledge the political posts of friends. But the state of journalism and how I see it negatively impacting public discourse — even contributing to its volatility — has me bothered. It's a disgrace people don't understand the U.S. is a republic. The electoral college serves a purpose, even today. Hillary knew it before she lost and hated it after she lost, but all politicians know it's there for a reason: to ensure a more balanced representation that extends beyond the power of the major population centers. It's a disgrace journalists don't go back to the basics and share the hows and whys of American politics from a non-partisan viewpoint.

I am painfully independent in so many ways — this entire site is a testament to that. My views. My lifestyle. Heck, in the 2016 presidential election, I opted for the power of the write-in vote: I voted for me.

Progress is made not by only challenging conventional notions, new ways of thinking also need to be equally challenged. It's not about swinging the pendulum, it's about achieving a steady state. Equilibrium.

Hmmm... Maybe I should actually run for president. Some day.

I'll put it on the to-do list.

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