Once upon a time there was this image of the reporter as a hard-headed, skeptical, show-me type. Those women who were the infantry of local journalism in the 1970s–they could see through a brick wall; and what they saw, they wrote.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I was a newspaperman: reporter and editor. And I’m ashamed of what my former profession, once an honorable profession, has become.
The hard-headed, skeptical reporter is extinct. Oh, there are cryptozoological reports about isolated members of the species surviving in out-of-the-way places in the hinterland; but you won’t see them unless you look real hard.
No one outdoes today’s free and independent press when it comes to believing pure crapola and pushing it on the public. A man gets his junk chopped off, shoots up with female hormones, and says he’s a “woman”; and every single noozie in the Western world calls this wacko “she” and “her” and makes like the guy really is a woman now–and piles on anyone who says different. Could anything be more soft-headed, more credulous? There would be no “transgender” without the nooze media.
Once upon a time reporters didn’t just pass along the Far Left talking points. Once upon a time reporters questioned what they were told, and kept on asking questions till they got the truth. (Most of them, at least–The New York Times parted company with truth quite a few years ago.) But today noozies never question anything, no matter how preposterous, said by any Democrat.
That’s why they keep banging the drum for Russian Collusion, never mind there wasn’t any. It’s “the narrative.” It serves the Democrat Party. So the noozies have it on the menu every day.
Okay, sure–it’s true that the TV nooze networks, even that far back, were about as straight as corkscrews. Ditto the major print media. Democrats are nostalgic for those days when Walter Cronkite spun his spiel and the whole country believed him because there was no meaningful competition. We thank God for His providence: the Internet has put an end to that, let Google and Facebook try as they will to establish themselves as an information monopoly. There always have been and always will be corrupt, dishonest news media.
But there certainly used to be more honesty in the news than there is now. And don’t tell me any different, because I was there.
The rise of the Internet as an information source has had some unanticipated effects. It’s good, in that people have a platform for spreading truthful information, but it’s equally bad because in that people have a platform for spreading hurtful misinformation. It’s a real shame that the established news media has abandoned their integrity and objectivity and have become advocates for their biases. I have no answers.
Wouldn’t think of telling you any different. I was a teacher, elementary 2nd graders, and high school physics substitute. I share the blame. (Although I did turn in the Principal for stealing the school’s money to buy himself a new car. And I did report child abuse of one little boy in 2nd grade. Guess what? Nothing happened because no one was held accountable and I quit).