Thursday, March 25, 2010

I Wanted To Write...

...a long post about a news item I spotted, and I started to write when I realized that I didn't really know all the facts and that the news article was extremely misleading and implied stuff that wasn't actually stated. Then I read some more articles on the same subject and realized that pretty much all of them were missing key facts. Even though I read twenty articles (slight exaggeration), I didn't have enough facts for an informed opinion.

I spent the two longest quarters of my college career in the journalism department, and not one of those articles would have earned better than a D in any of the classes I took. I do not consider myself to be an expert in journalism, but I know bad writing when I see it.

So I'm not going to write about the subject, since I really don't have enough facts and it would be silly to speculate on this particular topic. I pretty much want to dump all news media in operation right now. None of them are up to standard. They are more about earning profits from advertising than good journalism.

2 comments:

Roger Owen Green said...

You're killing me here...what was the topic of the article in question? You explained why you didn't refute it, but you achieved making me curios as all get out.

Tegan said...

It would be irresponsible of me to talk about the subject, since I really don't have enough information.

Sadly, my post could apply to almost any "news" article in current American media. There is an issue of Astro City about a reporter who witnesses one of the most incredible battles of superheroes in history, but ends up with a very short article because, although he witnessed it, he had no proof.

And that's what news articles ought to be, proof. Facts. This particular news item appeared to be based on a single account with no research into what actually happened by checking with others involved in the situation. A single witness is never enough.