News

Friday May 20, 2005 - 3:41PM EDT

This job is starting to really chew my chapped ass. I think I'll go see Star Wars tomorrow.

Journalism is such a farce. Somehow we have been lulled into believing that news stories are a way to get reliable information. But it isn't because news stories don't just present facts they present point of view. Many times irrespective of the facts. I'm an just not talking about sensationalism or crackpot journalism I am refering to the everyday basic news stories that we all take for granted as accurate. Journalist aren't taught to spew facts they are taught to make up a story based on facts(facts be damed sometimes). So when I hear peole decry the end of good journalism I say phooey, the journalism they want to refer to never existed. Fuck, textbooks even skew the truth. Reading as many news stories as I do on a daily basis you learn to not take any of them too seriously, no matter how "reputable" the source may seem. Nobody reports "just the facts ma'am", it would be too boring. Besides human thought isn't clean enough to be considered absolute. When you read enough news stories you begin to pickup how each source is skewing the facts or unevenly highlighting certain aspects for whatever purpose. I can't remember a time when journalism was objective. What someone actually did is boring (somtimes even in cases of the most heinous nature). It is the perception and interpretation that gets the mind going. News stories jumpstart that interpretive process for us. I don't think I have any particular point here. Just some observations I was mulling over.