"Journalists" implies they're all the same. They're not. For a start, some inform, some educate (same thing?), some opine and some entertain.
I haven't seen the piece you're talking about but is it actually the journalists who are doing the pontificating?
Different traditional media impose different constraints and have different production methods.
Television has to be, surprise surprise, visual - quite often at the expense of necessary detail. Radio has to be non-stop: you can't have silence (even if your brain has gone into free-fall). A print news item can be shrunk at the last minute to make way for a more important item.
Media professionals have ways of dealing with these situations but they don't always work.
Corrections in the blogosphere are all very well, but it depends how far word has spread before corrections are made. There's one doing the rounds at the moment which contains a serious factual error. The author has been told but, maybe because of Christmas, he wants more evidence before he corrects it. Meanwhile all his primary readers are now in possession of the incorrect fact and they're unlikely to go back and re-read it (or the comments, depending how he handles it) when it's been corrected.
Done properly and to professional journalistic standards, the blogosphere is great. Otherwise it's no better than the stuff you're complaining about.
You're absolutely right, David. By journalists, I really should have said "TV documentary/opinion presenters/journalists".
The problem is that I'm fed up with the philosophical presuppositions of quite a lot of the "opinionists" (I don't like to call them journalists, but there doesn't seem to be a better way of describing them - there are a lot of journalists who do excellent, professional reporting and gracefully accept errors). Their value is dropping off. Analysis is one thing, but opinion pieces in newspapers and on television seem to be wandering further away from truth in order to garner "page views" etc.
2006-12-28EST11:31:38+00:00
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The problem is that I'm fed up with the philosophical presuppositions of quite a lot of the "opinionists" (I don't like to call them journalists, but there doesn't seem to be a better way of describing them - there are a lot of journalists who do excellent, professional reporting and gracefully accept errors). Their value is dropping off. Analysis is one thing, but opinion pieces in newspapers and on television seem to be wandering further away from truth in order to garner "page views" etc.
Oh dear. I'm a columnist too. :-) I know what you mean. Opinion columnsIt often fall into the 'entertainment' category.
And there's the lurking thought, "who does he think he (or she) is?" Or, "anyone could write that rubbish"
I'm not talking about my stuff, obviously.
(ducks, runs...)
2006-12-28EST23:21:56+00:00
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And there's the lurking thought, "who does he think he (or she) is?" Or, "anyone could write that rubbish"
I'm not talking about my stuff, obviously.
(ducks, runs...)
