How Journalism and Discourse have changed; and have changed us.
As I've said in this blog, my mother, Edith, was an old-fashioned journalist, working for a respected New England daily newspaper under the prevailing traditional ethical standards of objectivity no matter what her personal feelings about a story might be, thoroughness and honesty in both reporting and fact-checking information, and simple basic integrity. That job often required reporting in enough length and depth to do full justice to all sides of a given story, letting readers make up their own minds. The usual formula was to outline the overall story in a few succinct paragraphs on a front page (if the story seriousness warranted the front), and then continue on an interior page in much more objective detail for those who wanted a deeper understanding.
All that has changed considerably, in some ways so subtly that we've hardly noticed, much less realized.
Newspapers have declined dramatically, and the TV networks often don't bother to do serious fact checking or in-depth research before blasting out yet another juicy story. They feed news to us in brief easily digestible chunks. (PBS, in their standard objective news broadcasting and with their in-depth investigative FRONTLINE documentary series, is an admirable noteworthy exception, thank goodness.)
In the frenzied competitive quest for ever more clicks to attract advertisers, truth in journalism no longer seems to matter. Or objectivity. Or often even basic civility and integrity. Conspiracy theories abound, and this or that network is heavily and unashamedly left- or right-leaning. Brief and often vitriolic social media posts bolster the trend toward only surface-skimming, short-lived "news" and discourse.
Algorithms feed each opposing faction lots more of only the kind of news those within a particular faction have clicked on, thus deepening our divisions, training each of us to watch only the news that favors our preferred isolated group bubble. Effectively dumbing us down.
We've come to expect no better.
How can we change the trend? We can encourage healthy debate in our schools and local governments. We can teach our kids to question everything before making important decisions. We can engage in civil discourse with family members and friends.
We can at least try to dig the truth out of the news by consulting more than our preferred network(s) before forming opinions.
And we can let our elected officials and our biased news feeders know we're tired of lies and fear mongering and conspiracy generating and sensationalizing. We can let them know we refuse to be conned or dumbed down.
Phil
Website: www.philbowie.com
