College Kid Writes Stunning Exposé Blog! Read All About It!

Yellow journalism- a relic of a bygone era, when young newspapers screamed sensational headlines and the public lapped it up. The stories were generally overblown, consistently downplayed and overplayed key facts, and often could only be considered news under the broadest possible definition of the term. Who am I kidding? National TV these days fits the same bill. In the 24-7 news cycle we live in, we are bombarded in every direction from every network with the latest stories. And as has been the case for decades, news editors know that big headlines sell.

Yellow journalism- now in color.

This is not to say that journalism today is all like journalism then. Standards have tightened- we hold our newsmen to a higher standard of truth, and fact checking blasts through outright lies like a sneeze through wet Kleenex. But the compulsion to take the significant and make it sensational, in a frantic bid to get higher ratings or more web traffic, is only undermining the hard work true journalists do.

You know, this type of work.

Using interviews, telling stories to supplement the facts, digging for every detail- this is what good journalists are capable of doing. Thorough investigations of stories and leads can turn a dull story into a fleshed-out article capable of influencing and informing public opinion. They can tell a compelling, informative story without resorting to sensationalism or blowing things out of proportion. There may not be the glamour of penning a headline that has the whole country seeing red. But it beats yellow.

Still, people don't always get things right. This site helps: http://factcheck.org/

Public Forum of Dreams

"If you build it, they will come."
If journalists start the conversation, the public will join in. That's why true investigative journalism is so important. Journalists have the duty to bring stories to light that might otherwise never be told, to shake citizens out of complacency when something is wrong, and to engage the public in conversation about serious issues. As the ones responsible for getting the facts out there, the burden is especially high for reporters to dredge forth accurate and unbiased information so the public can make educated and informed decisions. If there is a marketplace of ideas available, the average citizen can both benefit from and contribute to a public forum of information.

The trade-off is Internet comments.

Of course, this is a two edged sword. If allowed to dictate the terms of the conversation, news outlets can blow issues wildly out of proportion and mislead readers or watchers with incomplete or prejudiced facts. It's important that while journalists start the news by breaking important stories, they don't also dictate its terms and control the perspective at the cost of the public.

It'd be like someone jumpstarting your car and then driving off with it.

Essentially though, the bulwark of our democracy is the voice of the people. And the people need information in order to formulate opinions, interact with society, and participate in the democratic processes that make our country the great nation it is today. So a public forum like a newspaper is essential, the journalists chronicling the news just as much so. That marketplace of ideas isn't going to build itself.

In this article, the Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger writes about the importance of a free press in engaging the public: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/06/importance-free-press-alan-rusbridger

Live and Learn? Apparently not.

Free journalism- it exists to be our watchful protector, our not-so-silent guardian, our voice that uncovers injustice and deceit.

Basically, our Batman.

That's why investigative, unbiased press is so important- it can bring us the information that we need to know. This lesson was irrevocably seared into my brain back in 2011, when I was but a lad and still innocent to the ways of the world. The local paper of my hometown, the Santa Barbara NewsPress, published a stunning 5-part expose of award-winning police officer Kasi Beutel. The articles uncovered  her shady past, a possible history of faulty DUI convictions, and bankruptcy fraud as reasons for this cop's patent unreliability. The NewsPress scooped enough dirt on Officer Beutel to put her six feet under. Sounds like good reporting, right? Quality journalism strikes again, right? Wrong!

Officer Beutel: the female one

Psych! (And I don't mean the TV show.) What makes this whole series suspect is that the man who penned these tirades: a Mr. Peter Lance, who had been pulled over by Officer Beutel for drunk driving and failed the breath test (he blew a .09, over the legal limit.) Now, Mr. Lance may have had perfectly valid points against Officer Beutel. Certainly, his expose had some merit, such as uncovering that Santa Barbara police vehicles do not come equipped with video cameras. But he is the very definition of a biased reporter. He clearly has a personal stake in the game! To pass this off as objective journalism is to make a mockery of the profession. As LA Times columnist James Rainey wrote, "The DUI opus in the News-Press... was presented as a straight news story, written by someone who has a lot riding on the outcome."

Peter Lance: Someone who has a lot riding on the outcome

This whole Peter Lance debacle made a powerful impact on me. I realized that to have credibility, a journalist must be objective and to some degree removed from the story he's covering. The NewsPress could have delivered a much more effective and powerful story had they used one of their own impartial reporters as opposed to to an independent correspondent with an undeniable bone to pick. Whether the officer is guilty as accused is at this point irrelevant. The issue is so clouded that a clear account of the truth will probably never be revealed. That's a shame. And by the way, Lance has recently begun skewering Beutel through the Newspress once again, which frankly is just dumb. Even Batman learned from his mistakes.

Unfortunately, the SB Newspress does not publicize its archive unless you have an account. Here is a link to the page where you could view the article: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Search/results.jsp?dateOrdered=true&articleIndex=100&pageNum=6
Here's an LA Times article on the subject: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/02/entertainment/la-et-onthemedia-20110702
And here's some good journalism: The Independent (Santa Barbara's variant paper) columnist Nick Welsh brought this conflict of interest into the limelight in the first place:  http://www.independent.c om/news/2011/jun/30/putting-ow-back-bow-wow/

Food for Thought

Journalists should not be neutral, according to your text. If this is the case, how do they accurately cover the news? How does this influence your perspective on the news?

Above you see the definition of the word neutral. As we've heard countless times, this should be what a journalist strives for: impartiality, just reporting the news without opining it. But as I may have previously ranted about, this simply is not the case. That's because journalism is not written by impersonal machines (not yet anyways,) it's written by humans. People. And people have opinions and thoughts and emotions, things that must be quashed in order to write a truly unbiased piece of journalism. An interesting contradiction: reporters and journalists, guardians of the free press and the standard bearers of free speech, are forced to rein in their own opinions and walk the tightrope of neutrality when publishing their work? This seems contradictory, though journalism organizations (claim to) stake their reputations on doing exactly that. 

You didn't expect you'd doing this when you got that job at the newspaper, did you?

So is there such a thing as an objective press? The short answer, essentially, is no. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's natural to have bias, but it is important to recognize that fact and acknowledge it. More importantly, the public needs to realize this and make informed media decisions.   Using the vast power of the Internet that we have essentially sitting on hand, we have the ability and duty to make sure what we read and watch is conforming to the truth. A metaphor: if journalism is food, then watch what you eat. And try to keep a balanced diet. Don't just pig out on junk.

Pictured above: Unhealthy media consumption habits

Here's a very interesting article on objectivity in journalism I found (ironically enough) at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karthika-muthukumaraswamy/media-has-a-yang_b_1921683.html

Enjoy and peace out.