Posted on 05/09/2004 9:00:58 AM PDT by Vision
The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism's long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday. Carroll delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture, titled "The Wolf in Reporter's Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America." The lecture was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication.
"All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism," he said. "They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated."
In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts, such as Bill O'Reilly, Carroll said they were a "different breed of journalists" who misled their audience while claiming to inform them. He said they did not fit into the long legacy of journalists who got their facts right and respected and cared for their audiences.
Carroll cited a study released last year that showed Americans had three main misconceptions about Iraq: That weapons of mass destruction had been found, a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq had been demonstrated and that the world approved of U.S intervention in Iraq. He said 80 percent of people who primarily got their news from Fox believed at least one of the misconceptions. He said the figure was more than 57 percentage points higher than people who get their news from public news broadcasting.
"How in the world could Fox have left its listeners so deeply in the dark?" Carroll asked.
He added that a difference exists between journalism and propaganda.
As he addressed some of the hard hits journalism has taken in the field of ethics, Carroll noted that anyone could be a journalist because, unlike other fields, journalism had no qualification tests, boards to censure misconduct or a universally accepted set of standards.
However, Carroll said a great depth of feeling remains on the importance of ethics that is centered around newspapers' sense of responsibilities to their readers.
"I've learned that these ethics are deeply believed in even though in some places they are not even written down," he said. When ethical guidelines are ignored, their proponents respond with 'tribal ferocity,'" he added.
"If you stray badly from these rules, you will pay dearly," he said.
He said while much media has ended up "in the gutter," the L.A. Times has a different philosophy and was dedicated to taking the "high road."
"I do think that a lot of newspaper people have made a lot of strategic mistakes," he said. "They cut back space on things people really need to know."
Carroll, whose career as a journalist spans 40 years, joined the L.A. Times in 2000, according to the paper's Web site. Under his leadership, the paper earned five Pulitzer Prizes this year.
Tim Gleason, dean of the SOJC, said Carroll is a "journalist's journalist."
"As an editor he cares deeply about the integrity of the profession and he believes that news, real news is the heart and soul of the business of journalism," Gleason said as he introduced Carroll.
University graduate student Mose Mosely had similar sentiments. He said he admired Carroll not only for his vast experience around the country, but also for his consistent commitment to his ideals.
"The depth of his integrity is very impressive," Mosely said.
Bobbie Willis, a staff writer for the Eugene Weekly, said she felt Carroll brought up some relevant issues in today's media environment.
"It really made me take a look at my career as a journalist," she said.
Willis said she understood Carroll's concerns about the state of journalism nationally, but added that many of the journalists she has encountered were very committed to accurate and ethical reporting.
Carroll had a few words of advise for student journalists; he told them to pick their boss carefully.
"Don't be lured by the money or the big name of the employer," he said, adding that journalists should not allow their integrity to be compromised by unscrupulous employers.
"Don't be a piano player in a whorehouse," he said.
The Los Angeles Times' style book requires reporters to describe the two sides as "pro-choice" and "anti-abortion."
Source:
https://secure.mediaresearch.org/news/mediawatch/1989/mw19890501nbites.html
If anyone can show me that this requirement has changed in the last 15 years, I'd like to know about it.
Well, this is where I stopped reading. Who says these are misconceptions?????? WMD's have been found, they are spread out over the islamic world from Libya to Sudan to Lebanon and Syria. Some were even delivered to Amman but delivery was refused. A link between AQ and Saddam HAS been demonstrated to anyone who can read and think. As for world approval, who needs it? Did the world approve of Israel bombing Osirak? Did the world approve of Hiroshima? Did the world approve of Dresden?
Some day the world will wake up, and they will realize that this is a battle of good versus evil. The US is acting on the side of good.
Unless some scholar of history can show me otherwise I understand that in the Founding Father's time newspaper and news journals were not entitled to claims of copyright at all. Commentary in context -- Freedom depends on it.
This coming from the Editor of the paper that put more than a dozen reporters on a witch hunt against Arnold Schwarzenegger; claiming that he was a Nazi, an anti-Jew, and a "serial groper"...even though Arnold has funded and opened at least two Jewish memorials, as well as hasn't even been sued for sexual harassment during his illustrious (and tempting financial) film career.
L.A. Times Editor John Carroll spoke about journalism ethics and pseudo-journalism at the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday.
Media Schadenfreude and and Media Shenanigans PING!
It made me laugh.
What a bloviating jerk! I have to give it to him for Chutzpah.
L.A. LIBERAL MEDIA AND PROJECTION; HOW APT IS THAT
"conveniently overlooking the 'film-strip' to concentrate instead on what appears 'on the screen' of the world "
THE NATURE OF EMOTIONAL-MENTAL PROJECTION
Projection has a mechanical analogy; a film projector which imposes its internal images from within itself onto an outside screen. Sigmund Freud applied such an idea of 'projection' in trying to analyse the origins of mental and/or emotional derangement. Though some of Freud's theories have become irretrievably discredited, the essence of his basic idea of projection has shown itself to be fruitful and has stood the test of time.
A strong emotional drive is the element that makes Freud's emotional-mental projection different from general and normal perceptional 'projection', whereby one perceives and understands others precisely by the aid of self-understanding.
Freud saw projection as an involuntary process motivated by emotions wherein a person imposes a subjective feeling or a thought on another person or situation. Patients were also unaware of 'projecting' or how and why they did it. The quality or feeling projected or transferred onto another, moreover, pertains instead to the psyche of the projecting one. There was always an emotional need or frustrated feelings involved in such 'emotional-mental' projection. Imposing subjective feelings or thoughts onto objective events was therefore regarded as 'unconscious projection'.
Freud was concerned mostly with those projections that proved problematical for his patients. These usually, but not always, involved antipathetic feelings and negative thoughts about others. When unconscious and distorting in nature, projection becomes the tendency irrelevantly to transfer feelings and thoughts towards one person or group to others with some similar trait or characteristic. This is seen in the irrational blanket reactions people all too often have against all members of a group when only a few are blameworthy. The persecution of immigrants, foreigners, national or religious minorities are invariably based on projections which may well be considered as mass mental derangement, even though it is not a debilitating mental disorder for the persecutors themselves.
Wrongly to put the blame for something caused by oneself on another person may be a projection, conveniently overlooking the 'film-strip' to concentrate instead on what appears 'on the screen' of the world, so to speak. The events in the drama that unfolds are looked on rather as if they were a film in whose making one has no part whatever oneself. But a film makes no sense without a watcher. There are many involved and subtle ways in which one can deceive oneself as to one's own part in events, one's own responsibility both for what actually came about and also for how this affects oneself.
Only compulsive and/or distorting projections are problematical; those which contribute to or cause psychological suffering and behavioural disturbances. These are regarded as being a form of 'defence mechanism', being at bottom a means of psychological protection of the conscious ego from unwanted and threatening feelings or thoughts. In 'projecting', the subject subconsciously transfers a felt threat from within himself to some other person, group or entity.
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