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![[1090] The Absolute State Of Journalism](/comics/2019-06-10-1090-the-absolute-state-of-journalism.png "[1090] The Absolute State Of Journalism")
- Teacher: Good morning, class! Today, I brought a visitor! A true institution of our town, that is! Carl Greenwood!
- Teacher: Mr. Greenwood is the journalist who–
- Student #1: A journalist!? EL-O-EL
- Student #2: I have ten questions. Number 7 will surprise you!
- Student #3: If I ask the “wrong” questions, will you then put my name and address on Twitter?
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I don’t get it. What’s that about putting name and address on twitter over “wrong questions”? What’s the “inspiration” for that line? And what about “10 questions, number 7 will surprise you”? Is that a jab at clickbait articles?
@ Malin:
The 10 questions is most definitely mocking clickbait. Not sure about the name and address one, though.
@ Jéquiyot:
The address one may be a jab at The Journal News.
Poor poor traditional journalists. Being lumped with modern journalists must break their hearts 🙂
I find there is a journalist Carl Greenwood, TV and entertainment journalist for The Sun, Daily Mirror etc, UK. 1317 follower on twiter. No idea is he an ispiraton for a strip.
@ Malin:
It’s regrettably common for “journalists” to post identifying information about people they don’t like, as well as reasons you shouldn’t like them either. Thus empowering and soft instructing their followers to attack this person though personal communications channels, and in rare instances real life.
Usually called Doxing.
Well, yes, I think it’s a jab of “traditional, honest” journalist vs big newspapers. And apparently, Mr. Greenwood will take the blame for all the faults of others.
Don’t know about address posting specifically, but an increasing number of journalists nowadays fill their articles with captures of random people’s tweets on the article’s topic. Presumably they want readers to see this as “Reflecting the people’s voice” or “Keepin’ it real, yo,” but the actual reason, more likely, is simple padding.
Hmm well Journalism has faltered greatly in this era. Primarily because we see all too much a neutrality bias those that have given some rather obvious propaganda have been treated as if they were legitimate. One group has actively fought against Science and Facts with merchants of doubt and the other group as presented science and facts as equal to the propaganda
Its as if it were raining outside with one group saying its might be a bit cloudy out and another saying its dry as a bone. With the Media saying well one group says its cloudy the other says its dry as a bone and instead of actually looking outside they just present it as if either could be true.
Also media has moved platforms making the corporate media that is primarily the old fashion trend of click bait, talking about celebrities or bj’s in the white house as they ignore net neutrality laws be circumvented basically undermining anti-trust laws, as nothing more than a walking corpse. No one cares about the format or standards of such out dated pundits who do no real investigations. Though they have working to buy their way into youtube or other new outlets they are lazy and unwilling to change as they continue to stagnate and corrode.
In the end the rise of “Fake” news is really just their own negligence for not pointing out propaganda and lies and allowing journalism to be a mere water boy for corporate interestss instead of the a measure to keep them and government accountable
Reminds me of a joke from The Good Place:
Michael: This place is abandoned, where are we?
Janet: The journalism department.
Michael: Oh. Bad for the world, but good for us.
Novil, you’ve got your German mixed in your English (the copyright notice.)
All-Purpose Guru wrote:
The notice is in german for the english strip and in english for the german strip.
Malin wrote:
Does the case of the kids from Covington Catholic School suing the Washington Post for slander ring a bell? How about CNN threatening to dox the kid who made the video of Trump Bodyslamming a CNN logo? The current crop of “journalists” in mainstream media are all about naming and shaming anyone who opposes their world view.
@ Malin:
https://reason.com/2017/07/07/what-cnns-threat-to-dox-a-redditor-tells/@ Malin:
I feel like Daphne Galizia should be added to the tags.
Yeah. I’m currently listening to Tim Pool. That was… weird.
This is the most accurate and tragic strip I’ve ever seen in the entire run. As someone who was once a print journalist, this one stings hard because of how accurate it is with modern writers who aim for clickbait and try to silence opposing viewpoints by doxxing. Every would-be, has-been, and currently-is needs to see this one.
Maybe I can shed some light on the doxing, at least on what might have inspired it.
In europe there were elections for the european parliament about two weeks ago. Most parties that can be elected in a given country are the parties in that country, even though they might have similarly minded parties in other countrys that they form coalitions with (for example the green faction in the parliament consists of green parties from multiple countries). So in germany it of course was mostly the regular german parties that could be elected.
A few days before the election a popular youtuber named “Rezo” (he usually makes music) released a video called “the destruction of the CDU” (the CDU is the party of Angela Merkel) in which he names and shows a lot of points (and lists the sources too) about what the party (that has been governing germany for a long time (all the time back until 1983, except for 7 years between 1998 and 2005) and how under them the distribution of wealth became more and more unequal, how they did not nearly enough against climate change, how a lot of them are massively incompetent and such. The video is about one hour long.
At the same time students have been protesting against climate change for months (fridays for the future) and also against article 13 (the one that’s probably gonna result in upload filters). And the CDU and people near the CDU did not take those protests seriously (calling them bots and paid protesters and such), so the young people didn’t like the CDU much to begin with.
Rezo’s video became viral (by now almost 15 million people have seen it but even before the european election it was multiple millions already), the CDU once again demonstrated their incompetence by announcing a response video and then a few days later announcing that they made one but don’t want to show it, the european election happened, the SPD (another party that is currently in a coalition with the CDU) lost voters on a massive scale and the CDU lost a lot too, especially amongst those younger than 70 years and the media kept talking about those things.
The BILD newspaper (comparable to the Sun in the UK and.. hmm.. Fox News maybe in the US?) then released the real name and town Rezo lives in, even though he had used a Pseudonym and didn’t want his name and address to be publicly known.
So if it’s not something in the US, it might be something in germany that’s the topic there?
@ Senjiu:
(Score: 5, Informative)
I know this isn’t slashdot, and my mod-points are powerless here… but if I could, I would award you one.
I can’t tell if they’re jeering at him because they think he’s a new-style journalist, or if they’re using new-style journalist quotes to make fun of an old-style journalist. Either way, you can see the moment when his heart breaks.
And Trailsong is right. Trying for viewers does not mean you’ve tried for success. Old journalism: hard but successful. New journalism: easy but vapid. (also, long running intelligent webcomics: hard but amusing.)
@ Malin:
Wrong as in expressing thought that may, if read uncharitably, might go against popular opinions.
Now I’m going to say something that most people here probably won’t like to hear (this disclaimer might be anti-click baiting 😉 ):
Even today there are serious journalists (poor Mr Greenwod seems to be one of those), not only entertainment-clickbait ones. Reading the former ones (in newspapers like the FAZ in Germany, the NZZ in Switzerland or to some extent the NYT in the US) is hard, requires effort, might take you out of your comfort zone, might tell you that things aren’t that easy and there’s not only black and white.
But, hey, why take the effort? Just dismiss all these journalists as stupid and corrupt (“serving the corporate whatever”) and just watch your favorite Youtube videos*. Rezo in Germany was a prime example: just “destroying” a party that is anyway not so popular with the young people, pretending to be backed up by facts (that often evaporate at closer scrutiny, but who cares) – this will give him lots of clicks, lots of fans and quite some money. Great! 🙂 And it’s so much more fun to watch a funny guy raging against what you don’t like anyway instead of reading through long texts and working hard to understand how difficult politics is (and maybe even noticing that you were not 100% right with your opinion or that other opinions are understandable, too, and not neccessarily evil).
No chance in this world for people like “Mr Greenwood”.
Although – maybe when the kids get older they will start reading and think a bit more? Could well be. Hoping that good journalism will still exist by then. Right now it still does. Give it a chance.
*Disclaimer: There are of course also many good Youtube videos. I just venture to say that Youtube is not the preferred choice for finding in-depth information on current politics.
@Nobody: Media was always used for politics, that dates back to antiquity.
If you want completely neutral media, you would need to create some kind of supervisory board chosen randomly from the citizens. Adn even then, it wouldn’t be completely neutral.
welp…
even if i didnt get to see sandra with her maid costume…
this is sad. you’re evil, novil
Most of the quizzes on Facebook and stuff are just ruses to steal your personal information.@ Malin:
LOL A+++ representation of reality
To be fair, trashy journalism was around for a long time. It’s just become more obvious with the outrage mob baiting and leftist propaganda shoehorned onto everything.
So maybe the realization that it’s 99% attention-hogging nonsense actually makes us wiser than the classic alternative? IIRC, there was a study that mainstream “news” consumption reduces, rather than increases, predictive power.
@ Malin:
Never heard of “doxing”? There have been several prominent cases of it by ‘journalists’ lately.
The comments by the students are a serious burn, but not unmerited. I’m a professional, (Engineer) and part of being a professional isn’t just doing your job right. It’s also guiding the next generation of your profession to do THEIR job right.
This is something the prior generation of journalists fell down on badly, and they know it very well.
@ Arent:
Right, they were always biased, from the beginning. Newspapers, at least in America, started out as propaganda outlets for parties, which is why the oldest papers have names like “The Democrat Gazette”.
The change that’s bringing down journalism isn’t bias, it’s uniformity of bias. Because so much of the journalistic profession has been taken over by the same political party, (Thanks to the J schools) they no longer are disciplined by the fear of exposure by other outlets of competing viewpoint, they no longer have those voices of dissent in their own outlets that might point out they’re crossing a line.
It’s had horrible consequences in terms of the profession’s ethics.
I really do feel bad for the journalists of old. Or the genuine ones today. When that show “Newsroom” came out a few years back I really thought it might spark some sort of change. Or at least an awareness in most people that would hold yellow journalists accountable for their actions.
That’s a word no one seems to use anymore, “Yellow Journalism”. Fake news. Whether “Aliens landed in my backyard” or simple sensationalist ‘legally skirting slander’. There used to be an understood and clear line between ‘news’ and tabloids. Now, we have MAJOR webpages that tout the title ‘journalism’, and as such get their people into important events with press passes.
In my mind, the greatest line of that Newsroom show (basically the thesis statement of the whole thing) was “-but you’re using the word ‘journalism’ which means there IS an expectation that what they’re reading is true.” The second anyone pens a story that is proven false, or at least when someone pens a story that is proven false when it is made VERY clear that the slightest fact checking would have shown this, that person should not get to call themselves a ‘journalist’ any more. They should get a red mark on them such that everyone knows that what they write is tabloids. Sensationalist clickbait.
But most people don’t even bother fact checking any more. They just write whatever they want and put it online for the clicks. They’ll cite other articles written BY THEMSELVES as ‘evidence’ hoping no one clicks the links, or just not caring.
And the result is that THIS, what we see in this comic, is what has become of what was once a very noble profession.
@ Hegel Marx:
I think the inspiration is Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate game, but it could be a happy coincidence
I still think there is quality journalism today. It is just much easier and convenient to dismiss this and just not bother to read them, but rather watch some funny YouTube videos and feel snuggly superior in your own filter bubble. I see a lot of this in some of the previous comments that seem to mimick the behavior of the pupils in this comic . Unfortunately.
We all can do better!
Brett Bellmore wrote:
Actually, a newspaper that honestly states that it covers the views of one or the other political party is acceptable. After all, they tell me upfront that they hold certain views & I can just grab the other newspaper to find the opposite view.
I just have a problem with those newspapers that claim to be “neutral” – which simply does not exist. That is pretty dangerous, because some people believe that there are “neutral” newspapers.
@ Nobody:
Sure, you may think that Youtube is not the correct place for finding quality journalism… but the old economic models for creating news content are frankly dying. And… exactly Youtube is the type of platform modern journalism can thrive on.
tl;dr: even if Youtube is still not the correct place for finding quality journalism, it will soon be.
@ Arent:
Please don’t confuse “a content can’t be 100% unbiased” with “you shouldn’t strive to be unbiased to start with”.
A newspaper claiming to be neutral is just saying it’s trying to be unbiased. Whether it actually is trying, or the liberalization of information is making it produce clickbaity activist content, it’s another question.
@Nobody
“Rezo in Germany was a prime example: just “destroying” a party that is anyway not so popular with the young people, pretending to be backed up by facts (that often evaporate at closer scrutiny, but who cares) – this will give him lots of clicks, lots of fans and quite some money.”
That’s a lengthy way to say “doxing people I don’t like is cool”.
This strip is hilarious and painful at the same time.
Nobody wrote:
Yeah don’t know about journalism, but while I can’t say the strips aren’t bad, it does seem like it’s Novil has gone a bit heavier on the cynicism (despite trying to infer that he doesn’t care for negativity or criticism in the comments) as I state here:
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2019/02/23/a-general-observation/#comments
Which I use the arc with Landon’s mom as an example of how even with the unpleasant moments it was still tempered with some optimism and levity.
And as I stated in the comments for the previous strip with it, yeah stereotypes and generalizations should be taken as the broken clock that’s right twice a day. Take the details into account, but not the end of be all of accurate information.
Too bad I have yet to come across a good website that rewards quality of articles instead of how often the articles are clicked (as the former is -much- harder to measure.)
@ lil Joshu:
Youtube seems to be working in this direction. As in, it’s publicly said it will try to promote videos not only for click-through rate, but for quality too.
Xellos wrote:
No. It’s not. (Hope that wasn’t too long for you.)
@ Antiyonder:
Yes, you’re right. The cynical dosage is sometimes a bit heavy. It’s also not so clear where the author stands sometimes, maybe due to this cynism. Is he believing the kids are perfectly right? It looks like. At least to some extent. A good political joke or joke about society sees two sides. I think he tried here. But giving some comments, it didn’t work out well: enough people got what they wanted to hear: „journalism is bad. Don’t need to bother reading newspapers anymore. I can watch funny cat videos instead or angry rants and still feel smart. Cool!“
That’s a pity.
Way too painful. Way way way too painful.
@ Malin:
Some journalists have used doxxing regular private citizens as a way to reap in clicks. CNN and the Washington Post have both doxed peole who made political memes on facebook. MSM are vultures.
I’m an older man (born in ’54). In the US, until the mid to late ’60s, many newspapers differentiated between reporters and journalists, between “hard” news and editorials (op-Ed particularly).
College trained journalists, in those days were REQUIRED to pass an ethics class to get their degree. Note that, unlike today, this class taught what ethics were and what you did to preserve them (modern classes appear to me to teach how to appear ethical while destroying anything which actually is such). Admittedly, I’m basing this opinion on the differences between course books for Legal Ethics from the ’50s and the ’00s…
There was also a major difference in editors… I’ve seen some stuff a relative who was a reporter got back on this submissions: “I know you aren’t Joe College, but you’ve been doing this long enought to know this isn’t ethical”; “You call this a fact sheet? THREE independent confirmations before you call it a fact in MY paper…”; “This isn’t Editorial or Ladies. Write it over, do it right, or start looking for a different job…”. I have no idea what Editors do these days, but in those days the Editor made sure that what was presented was the closest to the truth they could get, or sadly, whatever the Owner wanted presented as the truth (*cough* Hearst *cough*).
I haven’t trusted a single information source since the early ’70s. YouTube isn’t, and probably will never be, a reliable news source. No one there submits their stuff to an outside person for fact checking; no one there loses their job for bias. Admittedly, with the exception of Dan Rather, this latter is in extremely short supply anywhere…
erejnion wrote:
I respectfully disagree. A newspaper that openly states it supports one or the other side gives the reader an obvious choice. In fact, it even warns the reader to take the articles for what they are – an opinion piece. This is the first step towards a contructive dialog – by admitting that you do have a clear cut opinion, you can agree that your opinion might be biased and the other side might have a point.
Even more important – you will immediately see if there are only newspapers left that support one party and “coincidentally” there “happen” to be none that support the other side 😉
If newspapers claim to be “unbiased” and “neutral” that can become a big problem. Many people will approach such newspapers without caution & actually believe they are unbiased. The authors might start to dismiss opposing views – after all, they are “unbiased”, which means other people are either evil or stupid.
If certain newspapers start to disappear, you won’t notice that, because no one is, at least officially, linked to a certain political party.
This “neutrality” debate is a distraction. The actual problem is that the media is allowed to print outright lies or lying by omission. We supposedly have slander and libel laws but they seem to only apply in extremely specific cases or they’re rarely invoked.
The wonderful thing about all of this is that corporate media tends to be left-leaning, so all of those corporate worshipping rand-worshipping conservatives are getting destroyed by exactly what they asked for. Now we just need to wait for them to do the same to the left-leaning libertarians and the world will be a better place.
Malin wrote:
yes, thats exactly jab at clickbait titles
@ Malin:
It’s stuff that gets put on the internet in social media by people who think they are journalists because they report something that someone else posted and includes those click bait postings. The point is that people think they are “journalists because they post things on social media. Greenwood has a tear in his eye because he realizes that the young of this generation are growing up without a true understanding of what journalism really is.
Everyone’s so focused on the problems of journalism that they don’t see that this is actually statement on the sorry state of education.
The kids are clearly thinking they know enough of the topic at hand to catcall the visitor, when in fact they are just shouting meme after meme, thinking them to be true knowledge of the subject.
And despite it no doubt taking a moment for mr. Greenwood to process such ill-behaved and -informed juves, the teacher has done nothing to scold and inform the students of proper behaviour. Not to mention having failed in the first place to teach them proper manners and respect towards guests. Heck, I’m THAT old myself, but even we knew how to behave with guest-speakers, no matter how much the thought ill of them personally.
Not that old, I ment. XD