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| An excitable gentleman from Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner |
When I was a reporter, no one was called a journalist and no one, from the city editor on down, was a graduate of a professional journalism school. This was in the days of copy boys and typewriters, with people yelling into rotary-dial phones when trying to pin down a story. Mostly, they weren't at their desks at all as the old saying was, "The first casualty of reporting is shoe leather."
It was not the most exciting of worlds, most days. There would be political stories that would excite the political reporters and almost no one else; there would be sports stories that could be diverting. Every young reporter wanted to work the police and fire beat, as those stories could be unpredictable and lurid. The low level guys, like yours truly, got to cover things like the monthly meeting of the Board of Sewers.
Which is why a high-level hoax would get everyone in the newsroom excited. Not only did the facts gradually reveal themselves in a compelling manner, but the holes in the hoax would turn every reporter into an investigator. It didn't matter whether or not the hoax served whatever political party was supported by the newspaper [I worked for a chain; some of the papers supported Democrats and some Republicans], it was a good story and reporters and readers [and advertisers] enjoyed the heck out of it.
So, what happened? I suppose it was the "Woodsteining" of the media, as reporters became J-School journalists, stopped reading literature and history, and now mainly take their cues not from their own intellect and drive, but from drivel written on social media by professional shapers of The Narrative. I don't like to criticize the intellect of others, but it's remarkable how much smarter, in both book and street smarts, were those barely-educated reporters of yesteryear. They would have never fallen for a poorly designed hoax; they would have never surrendered the story just to score some light and transient points against this year's Emmanuel Goldstein.
Here's Ben Rhodes, the odd fellow who was Obama's advisor, on modern journalists: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
That they are synoptic and naive, not to mention frothy to score partisan points, accounts for the low level of public trust they now enjoy. However, this guilelessness also leads to eruptions in bizarre hoaxes that are ultimately damaging to society's fabric, and that's unconscionable.
The Coracle doesn't take sides in American secular political ideology, except to find politicians to be universally distasteful; this weblog has always tried to be a virtual version of The Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. But, we can note how lop-sided is the deliberate naivete of journalists.
Consider this remarkably long list just covering the last two years or so:
Here’s A List Of Hoax ‘Hate Crimes’
Also, there's the curious preference these days only to give press to the wealthy and famous:
On January 29, Two Hate Crimes Occurred. The Media Only Covered The Fake One. Here's Why.