The Press

When I was quite young, in my teens, I briefly considered a career as a reporter.  Not long; the concept probably lasted less than a year.  I was on the high school newspaper at the time, and it seemed like fun, but it was just a passing fancy.  I think the idea sort of appealed to me as it was a writing job, and I like writing.

Since that time, through my work in the law, I've come to be exposed to newspaper reporters, and television reporters, form time to time, and I'm glad that the concept didn't take hold.  People criticize lawyers for manipulating facts, but I've learned to distrust reporters like no other group of people I have ever met.  It's terrible to regard an entire class of people as suspect, but my exposure to reporters has lead me to be very suspicious of all of them.

With only one clear exception in mind, I've also concluded that print reporters are ignorant of the topics they report on, and seemingly incapable of becoming informed on them.  Perhaps that explains, but only partially, what seems to come across as dishonesty.  It could be ignorance..  The one exception, I'd note, was a reporter for the Buffalo Bulletin, whose report on a trial I was in (as an attorney, of course) was highly accurate.  It was actually a surprise to me to read the article and find it fair and accurate, as I don't expect that out of reporters.  The Buffalo Bulletin is a small newspaper, and doesn't even report every day, but I'll give it credit for being accurate, at least in that instance.

In comparison to that, ever other item I've ever had that was reported on by a newspaper was reported on somewhat inaccurately, and in once recent case, massively inaccurately.

The recent example has been the most distressing, as the reporting has either been willfully inaccurate or negligently inaccurate.  I'd hate to think that reporters form an agenda and report accordingly, as they are so often accused of doing, but in this instance, I see little other choice but to conclude they have a view, and they're campaigning for it.  Shame on them.  Reporting inconvenient truths is one thing, manipulating news quite another, and printing outright errors as the truth quite another still. Even worse, to distance oneself from a second journalist that is a superior to the first, who then wrote an article that contained at least one outright, and material, mis-truth is inexcusable.

Perhaps even somewhat worse, the old virus of Yellow Journalism is still with us, which we often think is not.  Reporters like to deny that they have an agenda, but in at least two cases I've handled it seemed fairly clear that they did, and in one it would strain credibility to feel that they did not.  Accusations against journalist to the effect that they're basically a propaganda arm for the political left can be close to the truth, at least on a selective basis.  We like to think that the days of "You supply the pictures and I'll supply the war" are over, but at least on a more local level, they don't seem to be.  Perhaps that's because the Press needs a controversy, and a story which would relate that everyone is fully informed, and everyone in agreement, on any one public topic, doesn't make for much of a story.

That may provide the basis for coloring some truths, failing to report others, and just making stuff up otherwise, but it's no excuse.  Journalist like to proclaim that their first in the fight to protect the First Amendment, even while they'll be first in the fight to trample the rights of others.  But misuse of a right doesn't protect it, it tarnishes it.