The Death of Journalism — The Propaganda Meisters

SEE HERE You can read Ann Coulter's take and while I have been annoyed with Ann for a while now she's certainly on the right track here. I was always interested in journalism myself. I was accepted into Marquette University as a journalism major in 1960 until my dad changed my priorities by saying, "Sure you can major in journalism, but just not on my nickel." I guess he wasn't too impressed by journalists even then.

I had been the first page editor of my high school newspaper and it was drilled into me that everything on the front page had to be strictly factual. I was also drilled on the W5H questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? and that articles needed to be written so they could be cut from the bottom. I loved writing. But I think now my dad was right.

The journalism we have today came out of the activism of the 1960's where the vision of journalism changed from reporting the news to influencing events and so we began the error of the spin doctors. It started slowly at first but with television leading the way more and more journalism saw its role as influencing events. Today we've reached the point where you can't trust anything that is reported because you don't know if it is true or if it is spun to influence you.

It's too bad that we've reached this point. It is especially bad that the media is so monochromatic when it come to politics. They are almost completely in the pocket of the liberal progressive Democrat party and on the rather extreme end of the spectrum at that. They are providing cover for a president who seems bent on destroying what we think of as traditional America, the America of free-enterprise, personal initiative, and a dedication to excellence. In it's place we are developing a cradle to grave nanny-state which destroys initiative, sees equality of outcome as preferable to equality of opportunity, and deems merit something not to be sought. It's very very sad.