Polls done by news outlets are not news – news is the stuff that happens, not the stuff that news outlets do so that they have something to talk about. Polls done by news outlets are seldom done well but that’s another issue. The point here is that when the media covers itself it is almost never telling you anything important or information you need to know. Media is not news.
If you want to know about your favorite celebrity there’s nothing wrong with magazines and websites that cover those things. But that’s fan information, not news. At least not the news that matters – the news that tells you what’s going on in the government that affects your life and the world and events that affect both you and it.
To be honest, real news is boring. Remember the Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’? Well, that’s because interesting news is also almost always bad news. Exciting news is never a good thing. Sure, it’s more interesting when the US and China are at each other’s throats – but that will translate into increased defense spending and very possibly into servicemen and women being placed in harm’s way. That kind of fun should be left to the virtual world where the only thing that dies are a few pixels and all you need to start over is a quick reboot.
Dishes are boring too – but you still need to deal with them, along with the laundry and that pizza box you keep meaning to throw out. Boring news about the city council’s latest proposal may not be interesting but it’s still important. What this generation is going to have to come to terms with is that We the People are the watchdogs and we cannot farm that out.
There’s increasing evidence that government corruption decades ago allowed the collapse of Champlain South in Florida in June of this year. There was indeed news coverage of allegations and court actions at the time the building was erected. But who wants to hear about some boring building commission? We do – because we don’t want buildings falling down.
Same thing with all that other boring news stuff. State legislature passes a new tax in another county. Federal government sets up yet another agency to do the job three Federal agencies already do. Governments of all levels set up ‘independent’ committees to ‘supervise’ government – hiring the fox to guard the henhouse is still a really bad idea. Government is much more diligent when we keep our eye on it, and it’s a LOT easier to nip the stupid stuff in the bud when we keep up with the boring stuff.
What we need to do that with is real journalism. A real journalist sits through that boring meeting and reports on what they saw and heard. A great journalist does that by giving you the facts straight without putting their personal bias in the form of ‘spin’ on it.
Real journalists report on real corruption in government – not just the missteps of the the party they oppose or the people they don’t like. Great journalists do the boring investigations (trust me, the movies make this kind of investigation look much more exciting than it is – who wants to watch a two hour movie of a guy sitting in a library on a computer hunting down government documents?) and report their findings rather than just reporting whatever the AP spoon fed them this morning.
The legacy media may – or may not – be a lost cause. But we aren’t, not by a long shot. The people who created journalism and made it great weren’t college educated, didn’t have degrees and a lot of them never saw the inside of a high school (there was a time when you learned to read and write well enough in grade and middle school to get a real job writing – another issue for another time). Arguably, ‘professionalism’ in journalism is what helped to kill real journalism. We have a lot of media pros and nearly no journalists.
BUT we don’t need to wait for the legacy media to get its act together. There are a lot of folks out there – young and eager or old and cantankerous – who have the drive and a computer. There are still a few good journalists who can teach but even if they aren’t interested, there’s plenty of information at your fingertips if you want to be a reporter.
Journalism in the legacy media is six feet under. But the art of real journalism is still there. Maybe it’s on life support – or maybe it needs a resurrection – but it’s there. We need it – and if we demand it there are plenty of folks out there looking for careers who would become great journalists, given a chance.
Our part is seeking them out and paying attention to the boring stuff they write for us. The price of self governance is vigilance.
