We suck

Often, we journalists wonder why no one takes us seriously. We wonder why we’re considered so untrustworthy. According to a CBS News/ New York Times poll, only 15 percent of people trust the media “a great deal.”\nWe often say it’s because the media just puts out the garbage that people want.\nBut here’s the truth: We suck. A lot.\nThere are few occupations as self-righteous as “journalist.” No other job so readily calls itself “courageous” and “important,” and none pats itself on the back as gleefully. It’s no wonder that the biggest target of “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” is the media, not President Bush.\nFor all that we talk about representing the people and defending a higher right to a free press, journalists seem to be doing very little with those rights. It’s easy to blame Fox News for everything, but perhaps people went to Fox because normal news blew so much. Would people read about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears if journalists hadn’t enlarged their own statures? We thumb our noses at the masses for loving Paris, but we’re the ones who made her. Did we ever consider that we’re the reason people hate us?\nLook at our track record: If news media had been doing their jobs in 2003, maybe someone would have figured out that the run-up to the Iraq War was a sham and that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Rather than questioning anyone, the talking heads and pundits nodded approvingly, urging everyone onwards to war. Then, once the sham was revealed, journalists acted duped, as if they weren’t the ones who should have gotten the right information in the first place.\nNow, in the run-up to a new election, journalists are playing the same old tricks again, choosing personality over substance, and polling over issues. During the unending presidential debates, the questions are hand-picked by the networks and unsurprisingly highlight wedge issues and “gotcha” moments squeeze candidates again and again. Of all the questioners in the debates, it’s the journalist moderators who do the worst job. Consequently, the most asinine questions, like the soft-ball “diamonds or pearls?” question for Hillary Clinton, turn out to be specially selected by the networks.\nInstead of fighting for the most accurate story, news organizations scramble to get the fastest story. Instead of treating the public as people of intelligence, who can understand complex issues, we treat them with contempt. Instead of talking to “the people,” powerful journalists gravitate to the same circles. \nWe read daily about the increasing ignorance of the American public. People don’t vote, don’t know who’s running for President and don’t know who their congressional representatives are. The news media moan in anguish that people don’t care about what’s important. Yet, no guilt ever seems to fall on the journalists, whose only job it is to distribute the information and judge what’s important. \nIf journalists wonder why people loathe them so, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror.