Might seem odd that a journalist is writing an article about how journalists shouldn't be trusted, but I've always been very up-front and honest about what a journalist is. We are...humans. We're fallible beings who are often driven by emotion and with a bias developed by years of life experience, social pressures, and circumstances just like you are.
I've made it very clear in past writing that I don't believe there is such a thing as an unbiased journalist or, by extension, an unbiased news outlet.
This doesn't make journalists or news outlets useless by any means. If the journalist is honest with both themselves and their potential readers about who they are and where they stand, then the reader can judge what they're being told far more accurately. For instance, I have a bias toward libertarian ideals with a Christian backdrop. My writing and opinions will be heavily influenced by these philosophies.
You will never hear me say that my take is unbiased, nor that you should just stop reading about a thing after you've heard me talk about it. My personal take on a thing is one idea. There are a ton more about the thing out there that you should read to get a fuller idea about it.
I know I will.
But there are journalists out there who don't want to admit their bias. They want you to believe that they're the picture of impartiality. They want you to believe that what they're serving up is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them (insert corporation they work for here).
These people aren't here to tell you the story. They're here to intentionally serve you a narrative.
This was perfectly explained by Glenn Greenwald in a video he recently released defending Elon Musk and his recent "f*** you" to journalists trying to take him down, by lying about his stances and taking his quotes out of context.
Greenwald made the point that too many journalists don't take that same attitude, and in fact, embrace the guidelines and neutering of their reporting in order to appease corporations or people in power. They welcome censorship to the point where what they're doing is no longer reporting, it's dispensing propaganda:
We need way more journalists willing to say, go f**k yourself to people who try and limit what they say. The problem is, is that the people who are hired by these major media corporations, and who thrive in them and succeed in them are people who have the opposite instinct. Their instinct is to assuage and serve and placate establishment power, not to defy it. Even though the purpose of journalism is to be adversarial to establishment power.
Once journalism started getting corporatized, no longer owned by families dedicated to journalism, or local communities, but by major corporations that have all kinds of other interests besides their media division. And, what kind of attributes are awarded at major corporations? People who avoid controversy who avoid conflict, who avoid displeasing and angering powerful people. That's the corporate ethos, and the corporatization of media meant that that kind of attribute was imported into journalism.
And that's why almost no one who works for large media corporations or the media corporations themselves has the courage to say this. They're shocked. They think it's a sign that he's unhinged when in reality, it's just a sign of how cowardly and craven they are.
Glenn Greenwald says corporate journalists are losing their minds over @elonmusk calling out major corporations for stifling free speech because they are in bed with the very corporations they claim to scrutinize.@ggreenwald explains that we are at a crossroads where… pic.twitter.com/WbF0RKk5Gx
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) November 30, 2023
This is a great point, and I'd like to add to it.
Perhaps these kinds of "journalists" don't necessarily qualify as being "journalists." Perhaps a more accurate description would be "product."
They are a thing being sold to you, not as a way of telling you what's going on in your world accurately, but in order to get you to believe a perspective and idea that would greatly benefit that particular corporation or person in power. Like a catchy jingle in a commercial, they'll get you to repeat their easy-to-remember lines and story beats during conversations with friends and family.
Then they'll turn around and tell you that they have no bias, they speak nothing but the truth, and they're pure as the driven snow.
These aren't journalists. They're products.
