This day in age we are constantly at the mercy of the mass media in order to locate, process, and criticize the news that we are being given on a daily basis. With the transitioning from traditional media to those dominated by newscasters, celebrity news, and politics, it seems that journalism has begun its collapse. On-the-scene stories and those reported by actual journalists are becoming less and less common. With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the "reporting" that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition.
Perhaps the most eye-opening case is that of Circuit Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was recently nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama. As soon as she was allowed the spotlight, the "political hit men" were after her, attacking her within moments of her nomination. What's most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery.
The full article can be found here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/media
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2 comments:
I found the article interesting, and I think that it's actually a good thing that there are these political "hit men" that are ready at the click of a button with video footage to collapse someone's political career. I don't think politicians should be a complete open book, for example I think whenever there's an extra-marital affair in a politicians life the whole world starts acting like a bunch of three year olds like "haha he had sex!". But I think there is much benefit to people being made accountable for their actions and words, you can't make statements about setting policy as a supreme court justice, your job is to live and breathe the constitution, and if you don't then I'm sure there are other people who are more qualified and don't put there foot in there mouth as often. (just maybe they don't share the presidents rags to riches sob story)
I have always felt that there should be a greater gap between the personal lives of politicians and their work. In very few careers do people's personal lives influence their likely hood at a career like politics. People would never be fired from their average job for something like an affair, but in the political world there would be a massive scandal and they would most likely resign. I have always found this disturbing, as much as I would like our politicians to uphold good values, as long as it does not influence their job to a negative degree (which is all relative I suppose) I really don't care what they did earlier in their life or to an extinct in office.
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