Why I Criticize Journalism? The journalism practiced by mainstream media is in trouble. Why be outspoken? I am writing for the four people reading this that will be in positions of power in the newspaper business in 5 years. That is the year 2022. Amalgamated ,centrist white power will be deconstructed and new journalism will lead not fallow. It is a matter of seeing with a clear lens. Aggregated Opinion by ken Gigliotti
It is the job of a journalist to ask questions, get answers and to speak truth to power? Journalism has evolved to it's highest point in the analog world. In this world of journalism before 1980 it had few competitors,it could speak unchallenged, and it's readers listened. We did not sell newspapers ,people just bought them. They just bought it. They listened for lack of choice.
Journalism has become a corporate power in post 1980 times. The tone has changed .It is, an “order” unto itself that needs challenging. It's corporate nature has created blind spots that are now being challenged in this new digital and disruptive world.
For example,Television had the hardest time dealing with trans fats in food when the they were first tied to obesity and heart disease. Television networks are heavily sponsored by processed food producers. Trans fat producers. Newspapers and TV have automobile companies as major sponsors. The “car lobby” as one new publisher spoke to his staff didn't like motor vehicle collisions seen in the newspaper. Just because a lobby speaks doesn't mean the business would act. But ,who knew there was a “car lobby”. Over time editors seemed reluctant to give space to MVC's. Fast digital web reporting brought it back for moments on quick change news web pages.
Recent world politics has brought journalism down to it's level. Journalism is now within the range of criticism. The same powers that are dragging down politics are dragging down journalism. This decline has been steady and obvious and is moving steadily down. The depth of understanding of the fragility of trust is open to manipulation. It is degrading quietly and deeply,undermining social values. Just the words per minute spoken and the talking over of one another on daytime TV news shows is remarkable. It is like a food chopper commercials on steroids. Journalism stands old ,tired and scared. Even TV networks are shaken and threatened by age related corporate sclerosis and dementia.
An economic,wealth dependent Journalism rose in increments ,was threatened and rose again. Now it is showing it's age, it declines in increments, it continues to be threatened as economics declines furthers. It's only fault is it's economic age and age related denial and it's tired fatalism. It corporately blames new media. It has given up too easily to the awesomeness of the digital assault. The digital agility ,it's shock and awe overwhelms the slowness of it's corporate age. But it cannot hold back the thinking and writing. This energy is needed to move over this analog speed bump.
The digital age is a multiverse of an enigmatic expression and legitimate change. Journalism has made many enemies. Politics is a powerful enemy using this new tool. It is also a legitimate opening for old and secret power structures to use this new tool. These old secret structures have always depended on anonymity to change the course of history.
This type of power is great and offers a challenge and opportunity to journalism to rise if it has not lost it's ability to fight.
Change may not be as hard as it looks.
The problem is the lens journalism chooses to look through. During the early part of the Renaissance ,(another age of change) where all knowledge was studied. The Holy Roman Church at the time was a patron of the arts and of science. The knowledge was seen through a “Jesuit humanist” religious filter. Man was at he center of the universe and therefore Aristotle's theory of the sun revolved around the earth was enforced by the church was problematic. Jesuits were educators of youth ,“He shall be very careful in what he reads or quotes in class from commentators on Aristotle who are objectionable from the stand-point of faith.”(A Man of Misconceptions by John Glassie) As a result the study of magnetism of the time connected the forces of attraction between men and women to the attraction of magnetic material as seen through a “humanist” lens. It was also a time of burning of witches.
The lens of scientific testing eventually over came.
Journalism has since regained a humanist optic. The idea of how the world “ought to be”diverts from they way it is. This lens finds fault with actions ,not by any practical application of intent , only thinking it should be different and held to a higher standard. Justice is the higher standard , there is no other higher standard even though journalism evokes people being held to a higher standard. This thinking absolves the humanist in journalism's local view of institutional slavery ,racism, justice. Journalism becomes a test for witches. These are the things in Western History that defy logic and the stated practice of journalism. This lens of journalism is in fact the magic logic (like religion/science during the early Reconnaissance) that defers from reality and hopes , money will be spent, different people will take charge, but does not SEE where the real fault lays.
A lens that simply sees the world as it is , and asks why, presents many problems. It would be a problem in the South during the Civil War to the 1960's. It would cause problems for justifying Residential Schools in Canada over the same time. Canadian History is full state sponsored discrimination ,starting with the failure to keep treaty agreements with natives and the formation of Residential schools, the bad treatment of imported Chinese workers building the trans Canada railroad, Turning back of East Indian migrants aboard the Komagata Maru in 1914, and the internment of Japanese Canadians during WW2.
At the same time Canadian institutions pushed back with incremental legislation allowing empowering women starting from the early 1900's to modern court protected human rights legislation. The high court see through the lens of what is just , actions ,and works in the present.
Today, applying the filter of just seeing things the way they look would change and preserve journalism forever. “You are what your record says you are” ( Bill Parcells NFL football coach) is a turn around phrase. The magic of future betterment, with no pivot ,rebuilding year, reloading, a team with potential, turns around to a mindset geared for present action. Stories should talk of how, how much, how simple or creative solutions can be.
The CNN original series The United Shades of America ,dealing with American Indians of the Standing Rock First Nation was a remarkable example of hopefully a new kind of journalism. An African American talks with an American Indian about White oppression. Regular journalism missed the barn door of reality by using regular journalistic approach. Just cover the daily story. USofAmerica host W. Kamau Bell does not use the elbows up , knock everything over narritive ,rushed approach common to daily journalism. He took time ,he saw what he saw, he heard what people were saying,he recorded things the way they appeared. I think for the first time , and in the simplest most disarming way , he exposed the Center of White Supremacy. Journalists are always looking for the extreme right of WS.
It is possible that journalism has always known that “we White People “ are good with Center White Supremacy and are happy with ceding power in small amounts over a very long time to other races. Looking at the apparatus of power in the Western World , it looks very white and male. Any gains by other races and gender have been granted by the White Power (the white man) very slowly over a very long time. The Canadian government's male Prime Minister granted a 50-50 gender split because it was 2016. Racism is analog and everything is digital now. Has the rationalization for systemic racism found White Power's political and social center or center left and journalism simply resets for each local market . A reset to 1850, “they liked us better in 1850.”Then they all share a laugh in Standing Rock.
Canada has arrived at this place in time,less through politics and more through the institutions of justice.Politics in fact has slowed the process of transferring center white power those repressed peoples.
Moneyball's author Michael Lewis has a new book. The Undoing Project is a story about two Israeli psychologists who did ground breaking studies of decision making. The study examines how people make systematic errors in judgment based on human intuition. Their study advanced, evidence based medicine, pioneered approaches to legislation , revolutionized Big Data. There work tried to create structure where there was none. PC has no rules other than things “Ought” to be done differently.
One of the physiologists was interested in “the world that existed and worlds that might have come to pass but never did...He wanted to investigate how people created alternatives to reality by undoing reality .” (late 1970's) This was all before Political Correctness became a thing, but corporate power was growing .Big company's were buying out family owned media , consumer companies were moving toward globalism. A new narrative was in town and it sold , for awhile
This dark art of Journalism could come into the light. And, Time is short. Demographics are changing. The Conservative Party of Canada is a Taxpayers party now. Republicans a workers party .The NDP? Was it Analytics? And or lens change. Readers are not accepting the old optics of which journalism denies even exist. The existence of left leaning journalist dreamers does not go unquestioned. The existence of left leaning journalist dreamers does not go unquestioned.
A cynic might see political correctness ( starting during the 1980's as McHappy,or Happy news ,or TV's good news reporting )as a papering over a sad history of racism to harmonize news gathering formulas that create the same happy ending as the advertising it sold in the business end.
Journalism has also pushed the agenda of fear (future fear) for so long that it and it's readers only knows fear. Fear has pushed people to new less fearful media. Mainstream media has been creating a shopping list of potential fears has aided the rise a new terrorist phenomenon. Saying that no migrant had taken part part in a terror attack in France , produced a migrant terrorist attack within weeks. Before that media's hypothetical “home grown , the greatest fear” produced home grown terrorism.
It is just like sports teams no longer publicize specific player injuries for a reason.
“Panic, productively,” has Harry Neal , an NHL hockey coach would say to his team. The panic in media today is unproductive and fatalistic. The internet is too big a foe and it is causing the decline in the newspaper business. Even though the decline for newspapers began before the home computer became connected to the world of anything. The problems have always been systemic.
The evolution of political correctness has created tired responses by journalism that reject the nature of thought , evolution and culture. Journalism and TV has created wide informational and consumer related optical illusions of culture . PC is an attempt to hang on to a journalism that is failing to evolve.
Illiberal-ism is not a threat, it is a test ,to see if journalism is awake and can still get up. The liberal solution , as always with journalism's permission is to throw more money at problems. The poorer segments of the population see this money being diverted and only trickle down to problem areas. The problems get worse not better. People are noticing. There is systematic over promising and under delivering. Journalism and politics cycles.
Anger and cynicism grow. New markets form but not for old analog media.
The promise of words are in our past , our history and our journalists need to be reminded.
The age of terrorism rests on the words of dead clerics. Our culture has many dead clerics also. WE do not celebrate our greatness as much as we do the anniversaries of failure and sorrow.
I have been watching the abbreviation of Martin Luther King Day through the media. On his day we could be treated to a paragraph of his spoken words . And still his words inspire. But as time passes the paragraph is reduced to a line , then clipped to a phrase, and finally to an abbreviation MLK Day. There just isn't the energy in media to say the whole name Martin Luther King. I have a dream to. I criticize journalism for its safety and malpractice.
By looking at the world the way we think it should be, was a point of view from another age. Many of the dragons have already been slayed but it has left too many innocent victims in it's wake. The current “deplorables” of this time are the “Les Miserables” of another time but without ideals.
Politician ,author , historian Ben Sasse's new book The Vanishing American Adult talks of the “perpetual adolescence" of American culture by bad parenting “bubble wrapped children” who have never worked , and history where “the agricultural age pushed, and the industrial tool age pulled” and this new age is unnamed but I have to guess it disrupts. This new age of children are gladly trading real experience for simulated experience. They are being led by those forces.
But every generation worries about the next. The children of gatherers started work gathering at age 4. The agriculture age kids stated work a age ten , the industrial age 12-16 ,modern times 18. This new age thirty.
Journalism has to see opportunity this new age. Walter Cronkite who covered WW2, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement signed off his CBS National news casts with "That's the way it is." His optics were clear and in the present.
Local newspapers in general will be the first to go in this information playoff, eliminated in early rounds spending it's energy fighting television. A desperate and tired Big NPaper vs Big TV will fall in a super entertaining semi final. The big battle is with a new “age.” The fatalist formula. Hail to the winner. Aggregated Opinion by Ken Gigliotti June 2017
Topic: Why I Criticize Journalism (Read 1018 times)