The fact that I got this internship on my own very much angered the Dean of my Journalism School. He had seniors that couldn\’t graduate because of their need for an internship so he arbitrarily decided to disallow my 4 credit hours. The fact that the seniors had not applied for the job and I did was inconsequential. But, I digress.

The journalistic standards I was taught then do not seem to apply today. Now, the end justifies the means. Reporters are given the opportunity to publish their biases without the benefit of facts or balance.

This is encouraged or, at a minimum, condoned by editors publishers today. The facts are trumped by the media\’s agenda.

It used to be that only columnists, cartoonists and editorial writers could express their opinions. Now it\’s a free-for-all. So-called reporters now only broadcast/publish the facts that conform to their biases. The MSM is, in reality, no better than a blog. The world is on slant.

At the end of the day, integrity is either learned or not. I should have thanked the J-School Dean for disallowing my internship credits. I changed majors.

I would not be proud to be a reporter today. The once proud profession of news reporting has degenerated.

I started a blog a couple of years ago for one reason: to give the public an alternative to what I was reading in the mainstream media.

The subject matter of my blog (dog legislation) is not important to this discussion. The role of the media is.

During the years of researching my chosen subject, I had discovered that journalists were of three types: those who wanted to find out the truth (rare), those who didn\’t feel like working very hard (common), and those who had a specific viewpoint and intended to use their print space to promote that viewpoint (not uncommon).

Because of my own personal interest in the subject, I had done the research. I had read scientific studies, talked to bite victims and dog owners, and analyzed every piece of data I could get my hands on.

What I realized is that it was extremely rare to find, in the mainstream media, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Even in the cases of those reporters who had worked to find the truth, they were often hamstrung by their editors, who either had their own viewpoint or were paranoid about appearing biased, even if the truth itself supported the bias.

The crux of the problem came down to two things:

1. The choice, usually by the editors, of what stories to cover.
2. The facts (or lack thereof) within the stories.

I still don\’t know how to solve this. Without intending to preach about my particular issue (I\’m just using it as an example), I believe that problem #1 creates a public perception, for instance, that only certain types of dogs bite (or bite seriously). If only the incidents involving those types of dogs are covered, then the public and the politicians come to believe that those are the only dogs that are a problem.

Problem #2 simply exacerbates the first issue because, if the facts themselves are incorrect, that may influence the decision by the editors as to whether or not to print the story. For example, if the breed of dog has been misidentified, the story may be chosen or skipped based on that \”fact\” alone. And, when the story is printed, if the facts are incorrect, then the public perception is even further strengthened.

All of this perception is based on a decision by an editor, who is likely biased, and then on a regurgitation of old and incorrect information by a reporter who simply assumes that what another reporter wrote, often years earlier, was properly researched and considered.

As a blogger, I am careful to ensure that my facts do not come only from newspaper articles. I make phone calls, write letters and e-mails, and research actual studies, in order to ascertain the facts.

I\’d love to be able to write my articles within the mainstream media, where the number of readers vastly outnumbers those who read my blog. But, I can\’t envision myself researching the truth, writing it, and then having an editor with an agenda decide not to print it.

I\’d rather do it this way and hope that, eventually, those who do want to know the truth will find their way through the morasse of the Internet and stumble upon one of my posts.

Steve Barker

SI getting jiggy with it.

I think you bring up great points when you talk about story manipulation however. MSM, and I have to point to ESPN in this situation because its the largest in sports, tends to frame for the juciest story besides the honest truth. They only care about viewers and ad revenue, not about the honest truth any more. They\’ll spin their story with misleading lead-ins…look at their coverage of the Mike Vick saga for instance. It\’s all fluff and no truth. The media is becoming a monster in terms of determining how they feel about certain people. And I bet in your case the reporter was probably a little tiffed about not getting a comment and decided to run with some assumptions. The media puts out a very negative impression of you a lot of times Mark, and you\’re just another victim in a long-line of them.

And to 41, please don\’t throw all blogs under the bus about shoddy fact finding and such. A lot of bloggers gain access through being credible and get to meet a lot of the players and actually get genuine sources within organizations. Some of the bigger ones, like the two Pistons blogs that our guy mentions, are really wonderful sites for specific, insightful, and knowledgable analysis of each team. They may not get exclusive interviews with the owner or GM, but that doesn\’t mean they\’re not incredibly valuable.

http://socialmange.blogspot.com/2007/05/random-thought.html