What are they teaching in journalism school anyway?

Question

Journalists are not even presenting their ideologies through the language of "anonymous sources" anymore. It seems they can just attribute their own beliefs to the general public without any citation. Too many times I've read "There is the perception that Obama/McCain is (blank) on terrorism/war/crime/the economy" or "Republicans/Democrats feel that . . ." Is it the journalists job to tell us what we feel and think?

Answer 1

I learned the value of the narrative opening. I use it often in book work and tech articles. It livens up the opening.

Another is clear writing without dependence on adjectives. Another is using simple words rather than esoteric. It makes your work more readable.

Answer 2

They learn how to read and write a press release. A simple review of the web sites for university-based schools of journalism will show little or no core curriculum requirements in history, geography, political science, foreign languages or cultures.  It is why you can have a reporter kidnapped in Iraq who had been there seven years and still needed a driver/translator to get around. He was killed. It's why you have had a slew of reporters pontificating on what happened at Abu Ghraib prison without pronouncing the name of the prison correctly (the second word has two syllables, not one).

Their ideology is fixed by geography and social settings. They work together, live together and only socialize with those in the same area. So, there is an insularity born of this experience that can be absolutely mind-numbing.

Few, if any, follow the advice emblazoned on a sign which hung over the desk of the managing editor of the Chicago News Bureau for decades:

"The first rule of good reporting: If your mother says she loves you, check it out!".

Answer 3

Journalists are elitists, who honestly believe their opinions are better than anyone else's. They are taught that their job is to educate us, because we are not as 'smart', 'aware' or 'concerned' as them.  As a result, they will spin the news as they see fit, in order to do what's 'best' for us.  Propaganda pays well.

They don't really get that the impact of their actions will affect them also.  They see themselves as morally superior to those being reported on, and immune to the consequences of their reporting.  

Because every government needs the media to shill for them, they know that they will always have a job, so long as they say what the government wants them to say. After all, whores don't care who's winning the war, they know they will be working either way.

This is the dynamic that they are protecting, and that's also why administrations that don't suck up to them, and acknowledge their superiority, are reviled and slandered endlessly.

Answer 4

Self Esteem. Like they teach in all liberal public schools. Forget facts.

Answer 5

No it is not!! That is the duty of late night talk show hosts and celebrities on YouTube.

Answer 6

the journalists' job is to try and influence how the people (news readers) think and indirectly influence their action againts the events/news that they are reporting.

Answer 7

No, that is the job of the people on Y!A.