Four reasons why the media sucks.
Traditional journalism and the media disgust me…and this is coming from someone who spent years and years “toiling” in journo school.
After attending two previous institutions of higher learning, I enrolled at Dominican University in River Forest all bushy-tailed and bright-eyed: “I’m gonna be a WRITER! I want to pursue TRUTH! I’ll see my name published in NEWSPAPERS and MAGAZINES!”
I’ve always loved writing; I just didn’t know what journalism is. And you can’t really know the ins and outs of the industry until you’ve taken all the boring, tedious, cumbersome classes.
In fact, I was so clueless about the journalism industry that I got in trouble for plagiarizing the first “article” I ever wrote for a class. I’d figured that, like an essay reasearched online, you could use quotes from another source. I didn’t realize that if I used a quote by Joe the Plumber from California (and attributed the quote to him), I had to say that I found the quote on rightwingedhillbillies.com, instead of making it sound like I’d interviewed him myself.
Doing that sounds preposterous to me now, but it was literally the first article I ever wrote (AND my adjunct instructor was absolutely HORRIBLE).
Time passed, I went from Intro to Intermediate to 400 level Journalism classes, reporting and writing for the Dominican Star occassionally (I hate deadlines), and founding DominiNET, the first official university blog with eight other journo students.
I learned the elements of style, how to navigate an AP Stylebook, what the different types of leads are, and how to most efficiently organize your news articles. I understand the ins and outs of ethical reporting, journalist rights and the FOIA, and the importance of transparency and objectivity. I can catch any grammar mistake, am a human dictionary when it comes to spelling, and I know in what order to place adjectives. Yes, I’ve learned a lot and honed my natural abilities.
(p.s. I am aware that this title should be “why the media suck” and not “media sucks” because media is plural…but the latter sounds better and I will say it how I want.)
But there are a few problems: I hate rules and restrictions (deadlines, style guidelines). I love being creative, but hate when it’s within the confines of objectivity (read: I have too many opinions to keep them out of my rhetoric). And above all, I hate working for people, so my only option for true happiness is to work for myself. That way I don’t have to annoy managers when I show up late every day.
All that said, I know how to write journalistically and learned invaluable lessons with firsthand experience from some very smart and experienced instructors at Dominican. And I know how to write a funny, offensive rant in my own voice. So school wasn’t a complete waste of my life.
However, I still hate the industry.
4 Reasons why traditional journalism and the media SUCK. Balls.
1. They eat your soul and take away your individuality.
Election Night 2008 was a great night to be a resident of Chicago. I went down to Millenium Park that night with my girl friends to watch newly elected President Obama and his beautiful family take the stage. We cheered, we screamed, we rejoiced, we laughed, we cried…along with over 100,000 other people who flooded the downtown area along the lake. How the heck could you NOT?
Myself, Natalie and Sara in Grant Park
My favorite sign of the evening.
Later that week, my Web Journalism instructor told us, that as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, she was not allowed to show any emotional response or even support in the form of cheering. She, and the other journalists in the media tents, had to remain completely stoic. They could calmly applaud for the president, but beyond that, they might be showing a favor for one political party over the other. She actually wasn’t reporting with credentials that night; she was at the event like any other civilian with a ticket to the event. But because she is employed by the Trib, she had to remain “neutral.”
FUCK. THAT!
I love the juxtaposition of the street sign to the people flooding the streets.
First off, so what if you show excitement in the election of our new president? It’s an exciting thing for everybody…remember how the ENTIRE WORLD celebrated with us? What other President’s election literally united the world (at least for a couple days)?
Besides…only an idiot would seriously, honestly, legitimately vote for the McCain/Palin team.
Plus, right-winged Republicans are gross people (and most likely rich, white, racist bastards [or live in the sticks and still believe that Obama is a Muslim terrorist who wasn't born in the United States]).
Ahem. Just sayin’.
The fact that if I were to work for a “reputable” news corporation I would have to give up my personal opinions sounds like hell on earth to me!
2. They claim to be objective.
One of the most important, basic tenets of journalism is the concept of objectivity. You can’t show your bias; you can’t editorialize or insert your opinion. “Just the facts,” they say, “and let the reader/viewer come to their own conclusion.”
I call Bulllllllshit!
If news corporations TRULY were OBJECTIVE, why do we have liberal media and conservative media? Why is FOX the polar opposite of MSNBC? New York Times vs. the Wall Street Journal? Because networks and publications will lean one way or another. Why? Because we’re HUMAN and we have FEELINGS and opinions.
Sure, you can try to report “just the facts,” but a lot of the time, the way you organize a story, the quotes you choose to use, and your filler text will reflect your viewpoints, however subtly. Maybe it won’t show up on a basic beat report about a fire on the West Side, but if you’re covering how President Obama reacted to the arrest of Professor Gates, your personal beliefs will reflect your opinions. Even the types of questions asked and the “experts” choosen for interviews will likely promote the particular network’s leanings.
FOX, Fair and Balanced? Puh-lease. All media corporations wear their politics on their sleeves.
3. They want us to live in fear.
In journalism school, you learn about what makes something “newsworthy.”
Journalism.about.com lists the following categories as criteria in deciding whether something is newsworthy or not:
1. Impact or consequences
2. Conflict
3. Loss of life/property destruction
4. Proximity
5. Prominence
6. Timeliness
7. Novelty
And you can bet that the majority of stories in any category will be negative.
So is it that only bad things happening in this world and our communities, or are we just more drawn to the darker side of life? The media gives the public what they want. Negative and shocking newspaper headlines sell more issues. Stories of drama and scandal abound.
We’ve been conditioned, over the decades, to feed on the shocking, gruesome, bad things that happen in the day to day. Watch the evening news ONE night and count the number of negative stories versus the positive ones. Lighthearted stories about the good parts of life are often left as anecdotes at the end of the broadcast, or in a section about “Someone You Should Know” or something small and notable.
We love the bad and the evil. A coworker of mine would discuss, every single day, the horrible thing she heard on the news the night before. “Did you hear about the four-year-old who was raped and slaughtered?” “Did you hear about the gang shooting on the South Side that killed five members of a bystanding family?” “Did you hear about the fire that demolished an entire apartment complex in Oak Park?”
Every day, there’s a new health concern or something else for which you should take precaution: “Red wine is good for you! No! Alcohol is bad for you! Put your babies to sleep on their stomach! No! Your baby will die of SIDS!”
Make up your minds.
**
Why are people afraid of my neighborhood (Little Village/West Pilsen)? Well, besides being racist and scared of Hispanics, people think that all the bad things in the world happen on any side that’s not the North Side, Loop, South Loop, West Loop…or basically anything west of Western Avenue or south of Roosevelt.
Get over it!
My roommate’s car was broken into while parked on North and Clyborn. My boyfriend’s former apartment in Ukrainian Village was robbed clean. I know a guy who was jumped in the West Loop.
I, on the other hand, have never had anything adverse happen to me (knock on wood) in my neighborhood full of brown people and signs written en Espanol.
Latest update from RedEye’s Homicide Map Report: “July 23: Last week was a deadly week in West Town, which includes Bucktown, Wicker Park and the Ukrainian Village.”
Sure, people are killed by the dozens on the South Side, but this shows that IT CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE.
Don’t be afraid to go outside. You encounter infinite risks to your life simply by waking up in the morning and rolling out of bed. Sometimes you don’t even have to get out of bed.
4. SWINE FLU
The reason this is in a category of its own is the fact that it annoyed the shit out of me, probably more than anything else, ever.
Baaaaaaaaaah.
This past spring’s Swine Flu “epidemic” scare is probably the most irritating and condescending thing that I have ever seen the media and government cover in such excess. It also promoted more fear of brown people…yay, America!
And the fact that there was an ABUNDANCE of videos telling us HOW TO WASH OUR HANDS is quite possibly the MOST PATRONIZING THING I have ever witnessed.
Really? REALLY?!?!!
For weeks, we were inundated with reports that IT WAS COMING FOR US and people were afraid to look at Mexicans and ride the CTA. The freakin’ governor even made a spectacle of riding the Green Line from Harlem to the Loop, to prove that public transportation is safe. Then people started installing anti-bacterial hand sanitizers everywhere…even though Swine Flu IS A VIRUS.
As of July 24, only 302 people in the United States have died of Swine Flu.
UMM….2 million Africans die of AIDS every year, and EVERY 30 SECONDS, a child dies of MALARIA.
Get over yourselves!
Look. America is fat. You’re more likely to die from eating too much bacon and gorging on hot dogs before you die of swine flu.
****
RIP, newspapers.
The print media is dying, newspaper sales are slumping, and everybody’s turning to the internet for their news stories and current events. Bloggers have taken over the world, and people want multimedia options when it comes to gaining information. As a society, we must learn to evolve with the times and let go of traditional ideals. At the end of the day, I’m not sad I majored in journalism (even though the 28K/year pricetag kinda hurts), but we have to look to the future and say goodbye to the past.
Rest in peace, traditional journalism industry. It was nice knowing and experiencing you (because no education is wasted education), but you’re just too controlling for me. May your hypocrisy and rigid standards not hinder the new writers of the Now Generation.
Tags: journalism, life, media, Obama, writing
I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I originally went to school (and by originally, I mean the last time after leaving Columbia for music. ha.) for journalism. When I was trying to decide on a major, I thought that would be perfect for me because I’ve always loved writing and I am constantly curious and asking questions. I took a journalism class my first semester and HATED it. It was terrible. Like you mentioned, it was way too formatted, to structured and left virtually no room for creativity. We wrote at least a dozen stories that semester, learned hard and soft news, obituaries and various other boring crap. Our final was to write a soft news story about a topic that would interest other college students, and I chose to write a story about my sociology teacher who was an incredibly interesting woman that many other students knew. I thought I did a great job on it and spent a lot of time revising (which I rarely do). My teacher told me that it sounded more like a PR piece than a soft news story but gave me the A anyways because we had a discussion in which I told her that after taking her class, I would most likely not pursue any journalism career or major. In the end, it worked out to my benefit because I took several additional sociology classes with the same professor and also enjoyed my political science classes, and she was the one that suggested urban planning to me. Anyways, the point is that I think in the past, journalism was “supposed” to be very formatted and unoriginal in order to take the “bias” out, however, I think that our generation appreciates creativity and opinion–even if we disagree with it. Perhaps that’s why print journalism is dead and bloggers are taking over.
I completely agree. Too many restrictions and formalities…journalists ARE good at what they do, and maybe they’re the types of writers that like the simple, straightforward style of writing. It’s definitely not for me. I always pushed the envelope when it came to writing anything for the newspaper or even regular classes. I always wrote with my distinctive “voice” and generally got As on everything I wrote because of the quality, not necessarily because it was journalistic or academic. To each their own!
You put it very well–the new generation just sees and interprets the world differently than the old guys. I would MUCH RATHER watch John Stewart and Stephen Colbert as my trusted news sources over FOX and CNN (although I do watch the major news networks and visit their websites from time to time).
I love you, I love you, I love you. You make me laugh, you make me think, and I oh-so-often agree. Kudos for a great rant.
I’d say I agree with you on most of this stuff, especially the parts about objectivity and how you can’t show support for things if you’re a true journalist. I think its all crap, and after studying journalism/media for 4 years, I’ve found I have a strong dislike for journalism, more specifically the industry.
For an industry that should require an open mind, creativity, and numerous other positive traits, it seems to me the main goal of most media outlets is not truth or interesting writing but making money, just like every other industry. One of the main things I learned in journalism classes other than how to write and report a certain “correct” way is that the only thing that it comes down to is the advertisers have to make a profit. I don’t see how expressing your own views or opinions about something in everyday life is going to inhibit the sale of more newspapers, magazines, etc.
These are the reasons old media is failing. Newspapers are going bankrupt as blogs and alternative news sites take up their slack.
Richard Roeper and Carrie Bradshaw really have the best gigs.
I also went to school for Journalism, Broadcast Journalism. I look back now and sometimes I wish I had continued to puruse it, but then other times I’m like, “I’m glad I didn’t”…its so negativity and silly.
like on Entertainment Tonight and shows alike “look at Rhianna green skirt with yellow belt, walking the streets of new york. Uh oh she stepped in some pink gum” “her bodyguard hands her a hankerchief”
“Jennifer Aniston is at the beach, that Brad and Angie were at 3 years ago. She’s on the same chair with a pink halter bikini with blue line”
Its like so much and too much irrelevant information.
Like now with Michael Jackson’s death. One night its never before seen videos of Prince Michael laughing and playing and the next night of him crying.
Its sad but positive, happy news is boring to most.
So the negative press, more people tune in for.
It is overtly negative, dramatic, and gossip-y. “Uh oh she stepped in some pink gum” HILARIOUS! And the dumb thing is, that is actually on these news magazine shows!
And oh, my God. I wish people would stop picking Michael Jackson’s dead bones. Leave the man alone! The media was a big part in his demise and untimely death!
[...] Again, this is another great example of why the media sucks. [...]