Fixin’ To Change The World
May 31, 2007 on 4:31 pm | In Main, Media |And a curious column today by Helen Ubiñas in The Courant. In this season of commencement speeches, she provided some highlights of a talk she gave at a “social justice” camp in Colebrook. Can anyone tell me what a social justice camp is? But I digress …
One of the subjects Ubiñas had planned to talk about was “how exhilarating and rewarding it is to work in a field where you try and fix the things that need fixing.” Hmm … Is that what journalists are supposed to do? That sounds like government (or a handyman or the Courant’s Watchdog columnist George Gombossy).
I think this is one of the problems with journalism today. Too many young people enter the profession because they want to save the world. I have no firm figures to support this, but I have talked to dozens of journalists who say they just want to make the world a better place. I suspect this phenomenon explains why straight news reporting (especially on the national level) is often laced with idealogical baggage (left and right, but mostly left).
I became a journalist because I like to write, enjoy the news and get a charge out of giving people information they can use and in an accessible way. My coverage sometimes annoys public officials, but I have no desire to change the world or “fix things” by virtue of what I write (that is, unless I myself goof and need to write a correction!).
If I happen to uncover corruption and help put the cuffs on a crook, then great. But I’m not sure I agree with the old maxim that the job of a newspaper should be to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” The job is to get the story and if it comforts or afflicts then so be it.
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Comment by Jake — May 31, 2007 #
I landed my first job as a newspaper reporter a few years after Woodward and Bernstein ” fixed ” the broken Nixon administration. They were terrible role models. The world they covered sure wasn’t like the one I was assigned to. After a few months on the police beat in western Mass. it dawned on me. If I was out to ” fix ” things, I’d made the wrong career choice. I shoulda been a cop. Or a judge.
Comment by Terrence McCarthy — May 31, 2007 #
P.S. I’m talking about the town I covered, in the time I covered it. Cops in general? I admire the hell out of them and think they have the toughest job around. And the judge to which I refer ran his court like Michael Savage runs his radio show. Most small city judges aren’t like that. Right?
Comment by Terrence McCarthy — May 31, 2007 #
Terry,
As you know, Helen is columnist and a colleague of mine. The last time I checked, columnists take opinions and don’t do “straight news reporting.” They write about injustice and about “things that need fixing” all the time. Since when is a columnist a problem with journalism? What’s curious here is why she would be singled out for doing her job.
Best wishes,
Rick Green
Comment by RIck Green — June 1, 2007 #
Rick,
When Helen wrote of “how exhilarating and rewarding it is to work in a field where you try and fix the things that need fixing,†I took that to mean journalism in general because of her use of the word “field.” If she meant being a columnist specifically, then you are correct, it is a different ballgame.
By “singling” Helen out, I was attempting to make a broader point about what motivates a lot young of people to enter the “field.” This is confirmed by dozens of conversations I have had over the years. Hope that clarifies the matter.
Comment by Terry — June 1, 2007 #
Lighten up, Rick Green. Terry was citing a columnist on his radar screen to make a point about aviation in general. That’s fair. But I’ll shut up. TC doesn’t need defending.
Comment by Terrence McCarthy — June 1, 2007 #
In her column, though, Ubinas speaks of journalism, which makes me feel that journalism is the field of note, not just being an opinion columnist.
Comment by Amy — June 2, 2007 #