Blogger/Journalism Professor Dr. Danna Walker (of the Mass Appeal blog) recently wrote a post called The Seven Laws of Journalism, an article full of faithful renderings of media-myth crapola. The article itself is a bit difficult to read - not due to its complexity or "objectivity" but due to the blogging prof's remarkably callous attitude toward her students. ("Grow a pair" is one of her laws. Really?) Her advice is ridiculously simplistic, not a bit objective, and remarkably fact-challenged. But I won't address her laws; instead, I'll focus on the snarky comments she made in preface of them. I call them "The Seven Lies of Journalism."
- Split your audience into false categories and dismiss one category completely. The good doctor divides her students between those who will become real (paid by print papers) journalists the those she sneeringly dismisses as students who will be in "communication" (paid by radio and television) and thus won't necessarily become journalists. She is a poor educator if she thinks her students are supposed to believe that there's a difference - and if she doesn't think her "communication" students don't know of her contempt for them. What she may not realize is that her "real" journalists aspire to cross her invisible line into "communication" as a way to either (1) make some extra money or (2) make them more valuable to their employers. On-air exposure just might keep her real journalists employed. Conversely, the "communication" students need to know what she's is supposed to teach "real" journalists - journalistic ethics, bias detection (in themselves and others), investigative procedures - otherwise the television reporters remain well-paid teleprompter readers.
- Convince yourself "... young people can't differentiate between newspapers and blogs." Of course "young people" know the difference: If you write for a newspaper (or radio or television) you expect to get paid for every word you write and sneer at bloggers (who don't get paid). If you're a blogger, you automatically can't write as well as newspaper writers (who get paid for writing). What she doesn't realize is that her students - the smart ones - are bloggers (or tweeters) because that's how they will get their newspaper job. Oh, and both television and newspaper journalists are one round of layoffs away from becoming full-time (unpaid) bloggers themselves. And any journalist who refuses to blog is replaced with one who will.
- Her students "... tend to lump all the genres together into 'news media,' which they often deride as a personality-driven cesspool of bias (much like their parents, I presume)." Maybe they believe it because the news media is a personality-driven cesspool of bias. College students didn't learn this from their parents. They learned it by watching and reading hours and hours of snarky gossip and rumor-mongering disguised as "news." They learned it by reading about Watergate-style reporting and Walter Cronkite-style truth-telling in history books instead of seeing it or reading it. They know that the line between news and bias is as invisible as Dr. Walker's line between journalists and communicators. It only exists in her head.
- She thinks "old-school folks" like her have stopped thinking of news in silos — print, broadcast, online; cable, network, public, corporate — and have become comfortable seeing journalism as an entity that crosses platforms and business models." If she and other "old-school folks" are so comfortable, why are they endlessly bitching about the success of those platform-crossers?
- She thinks it's a mistake to believe that news "... is dry and objective — and generally to be avoided unless you're a hard-core politics junkie." News isn't dry, but some writers are. I've read both gripping, well-written stories and clumsy, poorly-written stories about the exact same news item. It's not the story that's boring - it's the writer. But there's no such thing as "objective" journalism and she should know this. After all, she's not exactly objective when it comes to her students. It's especially troubling, however, that a journalism professor would conflate "news" with politics.
- "There's a lot of talk about objectivity, opinion vs. news, the principles of journalism, and the role of journalism as a major purveyor of democracy and justice for the little guy." It's been many, many decades since journalists have given a damn about the little guy. They are much more interested in toadying to the wealthy and powerful. Whenever they do write a story about the "little guy" perspective, they inevitably quote a taxi driver or busboy - the only "little guys" they tend to meet. Their dedication to elitism is so strong that many media outlets choose their summer interns from Ivy League colleges - and hire the unqualified children of the rich and powerful as columnists.
- "Eighteen-year-olds aren't really interested in revisiting The Front Page or even All The President’s Men." Maybe because eighteen-year-olds can tell the difference between Hollywood films and real life. Or maybe they don't want to indulge in mid-life nostalgia until they are middle-aged. Instead of telling students to "grow a pair" when they come to her with their very legitimate worries about the future of journalism, maybe Dr. Walker should pick up a newspaper and learn about the layoffs in both "journalism" and "communication." Certainly she can't tell the students the truth about their job prospects: truth-telling isn't one of her seven laws.
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Comments
Contrary to popular myth, journalism has never been a meritocracy. It's always been hard to get into and rife with nepotism.
Why do you talk about the "MANY journalists" who "give a damn about the little guy" when the point of the article was to talk about one journalism professor who clearly doesn't give a damn about her students - at least those students she has pre-identified as communication majors instead of journalists?
Why are you jumping on my ass for criticizing you when you admit the person I criticized is not you?
Why do you claim in one sentence that journalism "has never been a meritocracy" when you admit in the very next sentence that the profession is "rife with nepotism"?
Indeed, your post demonstrates that you have more in common with the professor than you want to admit. Maybe that's why you come off so defensive.
2. Where did you criticize me personally in your post? Where did I "admit" that? Why are you using the word "admit" as though I have committed some sort of crime by responding to your post in a public forum?
3. How is my post defensive? Because I disagreed with some of your conclusions? I think you need to not take things so personally, particularly if you want to become a journalist.
4. As for movies such as The Front Page and All the President's Men, yes, they are flawed. But they aren't meant to be documentaries about journalism. They are entertainment. As someone who's worked as a film critic and taught journalism, those particular films are not only enjoyable, they are reasonably informative. I've also taught journalism for a number of years and have recommended or shown snippets of both films and the responses have been largely favourable notwithstanding the generational and film-making technique disconnect.
4. I doubt very much I will be back to your blog. So rest easy.
1. "... there are MANY journalists, including me, who gave a damn about the little guy as you put it." You aren't paid to give a damn about the little guy. You are paid to further the interests of the owners. If you "give a damn," as you put it, you do so on your free time.
2. "Contrary to popular myth, journalism has never been a meritocracy." Once upon a time, journalism wasn't a meritocracy. Once newspaper owners began making money and learned they could use their papers to make people believe things that weren't true, it became a meritocracy.
3. "It's always been hard to get into and rife with nepotism." As I said, being "hard to get into and rife with nepotism" are two of the principal traits of a meritocracy.
4. "I am not defending the professor, not at all. Where do you read that in my comment?" Answer: I read your comment. Did you think no one could see you were defending a blog sight unseen? If you HAD bothered to take a look at the blog I was critiquing, you would've discovered that you have a lot in common with the woman. Examples? She worked as a journalist before teaching journalism. She also showed her students the two films I mentioned. She also split her audience into false categories (you falsely categorizd me as an aspiring journalist).
5. "I don't believe in 'objective' journalism, I strive for balanced journalism, which is much more realistic." I doubt you achieve "balanced" journalism. You probably do what too many journalists do, which is present two "sides" of every story - even if one side is made up (as in "some said" or "sources said") or ignore obvious and glaring inconsistencies in a story told to you by an authority figure.
There's a reason people talk about journalists as being stenographers to power. I don't expect that to change as long as journalists get paid to write down words spoken by the powerful and pass it off as facts - or, perhaps, write down words spoken by two sets of powerful people and pass them off as "balanced."
Two glaring examples:
1) When my niece was a grad student at Harvard (Kennedy School of Government) in 2000, they were picked to observe the behind the scenes action for one of the Presidential debates. She told us later the reporters spent a lot of time finding "consensus" on who won the debate. Then they all marched out and wrote nearly identical stories declaring Bush the "winner" - because he didn't crack under the strain of the debate, not because he made good points or because Gore cracked. They expected Gore to hold his own.
If my niece could see this and describe it to us, why didn't trained journalists notice what they were doing while they were doing it?
2) A more recent example: Conservatives hold rallies on September 12, and police practically march along with them. Anarchists hold rallies at the G20, and police hit them with sound cannons and arrest people for using Twitter to get messages out. Two nonviolent protests, two completely different responses.
Do you think any journalist noticed the different police responses - obvious to us sitting on our sofas - despite the fact that they covered both?