I’ve been saying for years that not only is journalism dead, but it died by suicide. In reality, it died from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Few professions love themselves as much as journalists do, and none but Hollywood give themselves more awards. If you are a journalist who doesn’t have a wall of plaques or shelves full of laser-etched glass blocks masquerading as accomplishments honoring some dead leftist with a byline, you either suck at your job or are a conservative. Of course, if you are a conservative you have either been fired or live in fear of being discovered, because “celebrate diversity” isn’t a request, it’s an order…on everything except thought, where the concept is forbidden.
For years, the visible side of journalism denied such bias existed – these were, after all, the “speak truth to power” set. Now, after a lifetime of denial, they’re finally admitting the truth like it’s somehow a virtue on their part.
In a piece entitled, “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust,” the Washington Post admits the concept of objectivity is dead. Not, curiously, because it’s a faulty one, but because the current practitioners of journalism are too stupid to understand why it was important in the first place.
OK, that’s not exactly what they’re saying, but it is what they’re doing. What they’re saying is that concept of being objective is racist because it was instituted by white guys.
The Post writes, “increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality. They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly White newsrooms and reinforced their own view of the world.”
White people also created movable type and newspapers, among the billions of other things all people engage in and use every single day. Will these leftists give up those things? The world would be better off if they did, because they’d disappear, but this “virtue” only exists when convenient; it would never apply to, say, medicines or medical treatments developed by evil whitey.
“They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects,” the Post continues. “And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”
You are a special kind of pathetic human being if your skin color or who you screw dictates who you are as a person. If you don’t understand the difference between the two concepts, you’re even more pathetic. No company, no matter what they do, should ever hire anyone who lives this way or has their pronouns in their social media profiles.
They used to pretend to be honest, now they pride themselves on not being. The Post goes on, “More and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, in increasingly diverse newsrooms believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.”
The very concept of “news” now needs to be in quotes because it’s not actually news anymore, it’s activism with nuggets of information stuck in it occasionally, like corn from last night’s dinner.
The editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle “is among a vanguard of print, broadcast and digital news leaders who have increased their newsrooms’ diversity and created new avenues of communication among their reporters and editors to discuss issues and coverage. Some have assembled affinity groups or caucuses of staff members — for women, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and LGBTQ+ people — and involved them in newsroom decisions.”
There used to be a “wall of separation” between news and opinion in newspapers, but a couple of years ago when the New York Times saw that wall breached not by the opinion side, but the news side demanding the head of the opinion editor for running a piece by a sitting United States Senator because it upset their frail sensibilities, that wall was destroyed. The Times leadership was exposed as cowards, and the game was up.
Once the bosses lived in fear of the people they were supposed to hold to standards, those standards were dead. Journalism, whatever remained of it, went with it. At least they’re now admitting it. It’s probably the first time they’ve been honest in decades.