Through the years I have gotten to a point at which I hate watching, listening to or reading the news. That is a profound statement coming from a person who dreamed as a young man of being a journalist. From the time I was ten or eleven years old I thought of nothing more than reporting and writing the news. When I graduated from high school I knew I wanted to study the profession so one day I could follow in the footsteps of my journalistic role models. I worked hard, made good grades, and gained the respect of my college professors and the profession I had chosen. Life makes demands on a person's life choices so in time I used what I learned to follow another vocation in an attempt to make a good living for my family. I used my education in journalism along with my business minor to advance my career in marketing and public relations. Through the years I watched from the sidelines as the avocation and original love, journalism, a once honored profession, moved farther and farther from the ethical standards to which it held itself. Now I hardly recognize what it has become.
In years past, I would wake up early in the morning ready to read and absorb all I could of several local, regional and national newspapers. I glued myself to news radio (not talk radio there is a huge difference) in an attempt to keep up as the world changed. Through the Vietnam war and the hard fought relative peace that followed, I kept myself abreast of all that took place. I idolized men like Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid as they informed a nation hungry for news, knowledge and an understanding of the world around them. Through the years those men grew old and were replaced by many less interested in the truth and more interested in ratings. Slowly, technology changed and as time moved past, so did how the news was reported. The once honored profession that I loved has become a thing unrecognizable to many of us trained in the profession.
Accuracy, fairness and ethics were the components of rule number one of journalism. Yes, scooping the competition was important but not at the cost of accuracy. We checked our sources and rechecked the facts we gained from them. Yes, we called them facts because that is what they were by the time they went to press or were aired for the public. Today it seems rule one is speed.
Almost all news is reported instantly from hearsay and sources like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. There is no time now to check facts in this world of instant gratification and the constant news flash. Today news is so fresh that all to often it is based on I innuendo and rumors flying through cyberspace with no more basis of fact than a school house rumor. The media today seems to be more a gossip mill than a creator of a ledger of recorded history of the events of the times. The public reads of events from people less concerned about facts and more concerned with their ratings. They listen to loud-mouths and blow-hards pandering to the lowest common denominator while they spew their half truths and tittle-tattle like it is the gospel. Their words of hate are spread like seeds in the wind, falling on the fertile ground of people wanting truth and understanding of things they can't comprehend without the knowledge that facts, veracity and certitude afford.
I stopped years ago listening and reading this babble. Whether from the right or the left ideology it is nearly impossible to believe what is reported as truth. The majority of what is called news today is no more than empty words spread by scandalous gossipmongers.
I finally concluded that it was time to stop my reliance on sources unworthy of the energy I wasted on them. Years ago I started trying to base my opinions of things and people on what I see and not what I read or what I am told by unworthy correspondents. I try to base my understanding on what I know. I honestly think I see the world and all of its residents more clearly now.
No comments:
Post a Comment