Stop attacking journalists for human error
Whether it is via the president’s tweets, edgy YouTube Videos, or snide remarks from your friendly neighborhood Facebook ranter, journalists have been under attack a lot lately. If you type ‘journalists are’ into Google, some of the suggested searches include ‘liars,’ ‘the scum of the earth,’ ‘annoying’ and ‘intellectual prostitutes.’ That’s a lot of vengeance towards a group of people who are just trying to do their job, which is providing information to the public.
Sure, journalists make mistakes. Look at ProPublica, a well known and revered news organization, who just last week made a pretty sizeable mistake in which they published information about Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA that was partially incorrect. ProPublica owned up to their mistakes and issued a correction and an apology, as any good news organization should do. So yes, journalists make mistakes, they aren’t perfect and that is because they are humans. I will repeat: journalists are humans.
Journalists have the same basic human needs as any other person, they have feelings, they get tired, they make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Society tends to deem journalists as omnipresent creatures who hover over society, recording every move. It seems to be common knowledge that journalists know everything: every grammar rule, every spelling of every name, and every single fact in the world. That just isn’t true. Journalists can make mistakes, and they will. The more important thing is how they handle those mistakes. Journalists need to own up to their mistakes, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing it may be to admit to error. Journalists absolutely do have a job to distribute accurate information to the public, and when they make a mistake that results in inaccurate distribution of information, they need to make the public aware. This is true for the big wigs like ProPublica or Wall Street Journal, or The New York Times, but it is also true for smaller publications like The Johnsonian.
So next time you want to yell about how journalists are ‘liars,’ or ‘the scum of the earth,’ remember that they are people too, and make mistakes. However, that doesn’t mean that you should be afraid to point out those mistakes. A journalist of integrity will appreciate their mistakes being pointed out to them in a polite and helpful manner. So next time you have an issue with a newspaper you read, send them a letter. Or in the case of a local paper such as The Johnsonian, show up to a meeting, write some articles, and take the initiative to make the change that you want to see, happen.
Journalists are human and should be shown mercy. At the same time I have to say, from what I have seen, they are some of the most selfish, hypocritical and foolish individuals I have had the misfortune to be exposed to. I don’t say this as a reader or somebody who has no experience with them. I say it as somebody who spent close to a year watching them on twitter. A former friend was a journalist. In that time I saw a basic level of egoitism, hypocrism and stupidity that was completely staggering. These people stabbed each other in the back and basically used their profession not to educate but to garner attention. It was disgusting. When faced to help somebody they always professed to support they would turn their back on them if it did not serve their own interests. But as you said they are human. The problem is most people are selfish and annoying too.