Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/02/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - --------------6416951A8D2447F35DAD35E9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jim Brick wrote: > The News Media. > > It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see, hear, and know, how biased our > news reporting establishment is. Jim, I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with almost everything you say. First, separate out TV from newspapers. One is entertainment and the other does still retain some semblance of journalism. If you don't read a newspaper, and a good one, there is no way you can even vote responsibly. I can tell you this: When I went through journalism school the one single, overarching concept beat into our heads in every single class concerned objectivity. I doubt there are many full time practicing journalists working at good newspapers who do not strive with all of their resources to produce good reporting--words or pix. My father, also a journalist, had this same deep ethic. His feeling is that there is no truth, only points of view, and that the journalist can only try to relate as many points of view as possible and--and this is a key element--trust the readers to use their wisdom and judgement. It is all we can do. The shallowness of TV news (I won't give it the credibility of being called journalism) has brought down the whole "media," but solid reporting can be found. And as there are points of view, we need to read various sources to try to make mature decisions. It is our responsibility as citizens. If we only watch a bit of TV and a movie, we have absolutely no right to complain about anything politians, corporations or governments are doing. Are newspapers perfect? Hardly. And are under assault from generally conservative corporate ownership and from budget constraints. Little media today is owned and operated by people passionate about journalism. It has become the tool of big business in many cases and I do see that bias terribly strong. But still I read and compare, looking for glimpses of the truth. If we all don't support good journalism by reading, and reading critically, and interacting, we soon won't have much more than advertising sheets filled with press releases. The government, the politicians and the corporations would love that. No one to question anything. A nation, a world, of sheep. It is up to each of us to demand good journalism. I think the future of the world is at stake. And what does that have to do with Leica??? Well, if those of us on this list were part of the flock, we'd all be using nothing but Canon or Nikon. donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego www.donalphilby.com - --------------6416951A8D2447F35DAD35E9 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="donalphilby.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Donal Philby Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="donalphilby.vcf" begin:vcard n:Philby;Donal x-mozilla-html:FALSE url:www.donalphilby.com adr:;;;;San Diego;; version:2.1 email;internet:donalphilby@earthlink.net fn:Donal Philby end:vcard - --------------6416951A8D2447F35DAD35E9--