What we have is no longer good journalism. It's like saying you want food, but they give you shit, and they say "well it's like food and it used to be food and it's made of kinds the same stuff" but no matter what they say you're still sitting there looking at a shit sandwich.
I guess I should step back from my rants a minute to acknowledge: good reporting DOES still happen. Even on CNN. They've broken a couple stories over the last few years that warrant the title of journalism.
Just like in all things, the signal to noise ratio seems higher for crap than quality. What makes it hard is, again, the marketing, with "the best news team on cable" yadda yadda. You end up with cognitive dissonance because you see 90% crap and you learn to hate the message. Eventually, the whole package.
What we really lack however are the depth pieces that explain complex issues in a detailed way. CNN has many experts, and individually, these experts know a lot and write some good articles. Unfortunately, the only articles CNN really runs are 1,400 word op-eds from these people. Rather than giving you the benefit of their expertise by way of explanation and example...you're asked to trust them implicitly while they give you a world view to consider.
That's not the kind of journalism I want to read. I forget where, maybe it was CNN. But I read this amazing article on the Middle East. An article that really tried to explain to a Westerner how politically messy it is over there, how so many conflicts and issues have multiple stakeholders across a large geographic region, each with different, opposing wishes. I probably spent a half hour reading it, sentence for sentence because it was telling me something I wanted to know. It wasn't trying to convince me of shit; it wasn't playing the whole social justice routine. It was simply information, well gathered and tightly explained. More of that please. I don't think most of the Western world needs Dr. Sanjay Gupta to tell us women in the Middle East have it bad, or that plastic surgery is ultimatly bad for the self-image of Western teenage girls.
But I long since stopped assuming what I want to know is what "people" want to know. Even in my own j-school classes, I was the old man, pining for better days. Which made teachers like me in one sense, in the same breath they disliked me because I flat out rejected all the new media craze, which is the only thing they were intent on teaching because it was their mandate. I was one of a handful who said they still liked to get their news in a newspaper, and teachers would just kinda shake their heads and be like "Yeah those were the days...."
Specifically, I want to see a guy go before a congressional hearing and be told he needs to tell the whole truth and nothing but, and when it turns out he was lying through his teeth, the newsies won't rest until he's in a jail cell. I want to see a CEO who told his company to pollute illegally, and then when there's a lawsuit and he tries to intimidate the jury, the newsies won't rest until he's gotten his comeuppance. The first step in getting out from under corruption is exposing it. Then people get upset and demand it be cleaned up. Not just swept under the rug, but scoured and incinerated. I see nothing wrong with a journalist being paid 50k a year to make sure one politician can't accept any bribes / lobbying. Put out a bounty! Make it so if you go into public service it's because you want to do good, not because you'll make millions. Make it so a CEO can't secretly get a $1m bonus while simultaneously laying off 100 workers.
Here's journalism's other dirty little secret.....access means everything. You tread the line between investigating your sources and giving them a platform on which they can express their views. If you hound people to the ends of the earth, you end up doing all your reporting from the street because no one will go on camera with you, no one will talk to you on the phone and no one will give you a comment on the record. In truth, there's TONS of people operating this way already: they're called bloggers. That's what decent journalism has basically been reduced to. Public figures have wisened up to the fact that it's often in their best interest to say nothing.
Which is why I find the Colbert show so hilariously ironic. Public figures that wouldn't go within 100 feet of a reporter willingly come on to his show to be cornered, look awkward and sweat a lot. They're so desperate for media exposure they'll risk just about anything except an honest conversation. They mistakenly do not take Colbert seriously so they view his show as free PR, still not realizing that they're actually revealing their true selves on TV to him. It's so backasswards it makes me laugh.
At least they got smart enough to stop coming on the Daily Show. Jesus.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3695763 times)