Hey everybody,
I was trying to decide what movie to rent the other day, thinking about motion pictures in general, and I realized that nearly every movie I have seen with journalists depicts them in a negative way. For some reason there is this idea of journalists as being sneaky sleaze-balls who will do anything to get information for self serving purposes. With a few exceptions, such as All the President's Men, motion pictures generally portray journalists as the bad guys, as if we are hindering the American way through our pesky questions.
Normally I could care less about a public image or what other people think about me, which has sometimes proved to be detrimental in my endeavors, but a journalist's image and trustworthiness are some of his/her most vital tools. How people view us will inevitably determine whether they take our words seriously or whether they would trust us with interpreting and dispersing information that they have to offer.
I'll cut this rant short before I get off topic, but I will end by saying that I think the job of reporting information to the public is a noble occupation and a necessary one in sustaining a successful democracy. The public tends to only remember the bad and the obvious, when journalists make mistakes or when they simply regurgitate information that was served to them on a silver platter, but a true reporter digs deep to uncover the truth with the intention of educating the masses, not self-gratification.
Monday, February 5, 2007
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3 comments:
Interesting thought Nate. I have the same feeling about journalists and how they are portrayed in movies. It can be a double edged sword to want to help make the country move forward in freedom while the world is led to believe that we hold it back. But you have the right attitude which is to keep on keeping on.
Thanks Matt. Just another example that I read from an email that Lillie sent me, about a Klan-busting journalist from Mississippi named Jerry Mitchell, where movies represent bad journalistic ethics:
He (Jerry Mitchell) actively
hates the movie Absence of Malice because, among other things, the careless
reporter portrayed by Sally Field does something too many journalists
do: she waits until the last minute to try to contact a story subject
suspected of a crime and seems content to go with "could not be reached
for comment." "Anybody who is any kind of decent journalist knows that
some of the best material you get are from targets of investigations,"
Mitchell says. "So this notion that all you have to do is make some
obligatory call to the target doesn't know much about journalism in my
book."
I agree!
What also gets me going is how movies tend to glamorize the job. They always show such cool-looking newsrooms-- no windowless closets like the one we just visited at the Capitol...
:P
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