There's this great scene in Unforgiven. Hell, all the scenes are great, but there's one I think about a lot and how it's a lesson in gunfighting, but it can be applied to a lot of things in life. Little Bill and Beauchamp are discussing the fine art of killing people with guns (with guns) while a beaten and raw English Bob rests in the jail. The salient point of the scene is this: if you're trying to be the fastest, you will fail. Accuracy is more important than speed. Sure, you might fire first if you're trying to be fast, but you'll probably miss. If you take your time and go for accuracy, you will always hit your mark, and that is of paramount importance.
The reason I think of it is because not too long ago I found my old journalism textbook from when I was in college. This is the thing that made me think of Unforgiven:
I hope you can read that. It looked fine when I took the picture, but it looks kind of blurry here. It's late at night, anyway, so maybe it's just that my eyes are failing me. That's OK. They've been failing me since I had to get my first set of glasses in 3rd grade. Ethics in journalism made me think about how much the world has changed since I took that course and wrote as a journalist for the Leader. For reference, the year I'm talking about is early 2000, when the internet wasn't fucking everywhere and an integral part of one's life.
Our project for the semester was to find a part about Elmhurst that not a lot of people think about and write about that. Half-joking (but kinda serious) I said, "Latent bigotry." So my professor made it my assignment. I did research and found out that not all bigotry in Elmhurst is latent. On the one hand, there was a sign at a local park saying that the basketball court was meant for neighborhood kids only . . . because Black kids from Berkeley would walk down here and use it, thus invading the white neighborhood. The sign didn't say that part, but it was the latent part of "latent bigotry." Then I discovered that there were actual cross burnings on lawns not too far from where I used to play when I was a kid. A Black college student maybe ten years before my time at the college was harassed for dating a white woman, and his car was vandalized with the n-word keyed into it. That's the tip of the iceberg and not quite so latent.
My intent with the piece was to get my fellow Elmhurstians (is that a word?) to find that place inside of themselves, to look at their own actions (or lack thereof) and ask, "Am I racist? Do I do something that contributes to the bigotry of my community?" But the discovered intent was, "Holy shit, there are real full-blown racists here, and the community just lets that happen?" My lesson was this: no matter what you think is going on, it is your duty to print the truth. That's what ethics in journalism is about.
But the problem is, now that everyone gets their news from the internet, it's next to impossible to live up to journalistic ethics. Because the one thing that the internet values over all else is SPEED, not ACCURACY. Investigative journalism has taken a back seat because that shit takes time. You have to research. Talk to people. Look at all the angles. And so on.
But no, everyone wants to get the scoop, and if you get it wrong? Who cares? Just issue a correction that no one will ever read, and you're gold. I have my doubts that any online news site even has fact-checkers anymore. Maybe not even editors. It used to be that an editor had to go over the story, check everything out, make sure you can't get sued, and then (ONLY THEN) rack it up for print.
As a disclaimer, I feel it is necessary to note that even back then, when I was in college writing for the Leader, not everyone was ethical. Here's something that happened on a regular basis: newspapers printing shit they get off the AP without vetting it. Or even worse, printing press releases word for fucking word without a second thought as to accuracy. And then there were journalists who got fired for flat-out making stories up. And, going all the way back to the infancy of journalism, fighting with advertisers. If you write a story that an advertiser doesn't like, guess who's getting a kick in the ass? Hint: not the guy who pays for the paper's existence. But my point is, ethics in journalism used to be possible.
Now? I can't think of a single journalist with ethics. It doesn't help that on 24 hour news channels that opinions have taken the place of reporting. Almost every talking head you see is spouting an opinion as fact. And those who don't? They're pretty people reading things off a teleprompter. They've done none of the legwork.
That fucking sucks. I used to dream of being a Kolchak-type reporter (or, more to the point, a Spider Jerusalem-type reporter) dedicated to the truth at all costs. Worm out the evil pricks and reveal them to be what they really are and HAVE THE FACTS TO BACK IT UP. But no one wants that anymore.
It's too bad. It used to be that journalists like that kept the lying cocksuckers at bay, but without a watch dog, well, look around. See what I mean?
Here's an added bonus to tonight's GF, warning journalists about their own sexism:
I'm glad to say I currently pass the test, but I can't help but think that the general attitude of this is kinda sexist in and of itself. The textbook seems to assume that the journalist in question is a man . . .
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