Journalism is dead, man

Squee! Another rant from me.

I was a journalism major in college. It was a perfect match, I thought. I'm nosey. I like to write. And I like to meet new people and hear things about them.

Back then, in my beginning news writing days, I was innocent. Naive even. The world had it's troubles. 9-11 had happened and things were pretty sad for a long time. Then there was the Iraq war and well, we all know the story.

At the time, news writing seemed so simple. So logical. You wrote the facts. Who, what, when, where, and how. Sometimes why. You interviewed someone, you wrote their exact words. And you were done. The story was there for anyone to read.

I had to take a Press Law and Ethics class. I hated that class, but adored my professor. He had spent the previous 20 years in South Africa, writing and photographing the stories there. We were honored to have him.

Press Law and Ethics was the class where we talked about objectivity. We talked about why we had to quote, verbatim, our sources. Why we had a moral obligation to just tell the facts. It's kind of egotistical, really. And the pay is crap, by the way. But there is a certain "higher calling" to the profession.

To give the people the truth, to tell them the story, to record history, to give the facts of the day's events.

I was in awe of this. It's what I wanted to do. It was what I was called to do.

Now, I am thankful I dropped out before I got my degree. I have maintained my naivety about journalism, while all at the same time I've become disdainful toward it.

Journalism is nothing like it was meant to be. Corporate conglomerates are running the media. It is a for-profit industry. It has a product to sell to its audience and it will shove it down your throat til you buy it.

Journalism doesn't exist anymore. The birth of the 24 hour cable news networks killed it. You don't get to decide what to think about the facts anymore. They tell you what to think about things. They don't tell two sides of the story. Why would they? They have a product to sell. They have an agenda.

Look, I'm not all about conspiracy theories and all that nonsense. But I do think journalism is dead. You want just the facts? Just the who, what, when, where, how and sometimes why? Pick up a newspaper (but even they are owned by big corporate conglomerates). Even though they are kind of part of that big money-making industry, they at least stick to a small part of the journalism ethics I was taught. They tell the news and then they tell you what to think of the news on the editorial page. But it's not all mixed in and no one is screaming at you and you can skip over the editorial page if you want. But a lot of these papers are going belly up and people are too damn lazy to read and think for themselves. They want the networks to decide for them. It's sad, really.

Journalism is dead, man.