“What has the AP said about this?”
“The AP says, they have spoken to him, they are satisfied with his existence….”

…well, isn’t that nice. The AP, a major source for news for media outlets around the country, used an actual source for news, actually used a verifiable human being as a source for information. It wasn’t the case — *THIS* time — of somebody on the AP’s staff citing an imaginary friend.

Imagine if you went to a hospital for surgery and you discovered, right before going under, that the guy with the scalpel wasn’t an actual doctor. Imagine air-traffic controllers getting guidance on landing approaches by calling to passengers on the airplanes on approach. Imagine traffic policemen only giving the go-ahead to drivers in cars they like.

We can’t live in an approximate fantasy world. If journalism is a profession, it must have and maintain professional standards. This whole Jamilgate thing, along with poll after poll showing the obvious and systemic bias of the establishment press in this country, will *NEVER* receive the attention it deserves.

The electorate is being steered and lied to. You expect that of politicians. It’s criminal with it’s the reporters who’re bent.

You’d be naive not to thing today that you can count on accurate information on *ANYTHING* of any importance in society. Why is the whole “Iraq is a disaster” equation suspect? Because we don’t know enough about what’s going…because what’s going on isn’t getting through the establishment media’s array of filters.

This deserves to be shouted from the mountaintops.

Puritan1648 on December 4, 2006 at 1:39 PM

As a professional, I am bound legally to maintain standards in order to protect the public as well as for my own personal well being, e.g. performing services well to bring in more business. In journalism, they only have to answer to the marketplace….

To clarify or summarize my post above, journalism is not a profession, it is a business. Perhaps if the image of journalism as a “noble profession” were eliminated, people would be more willing to question exactly what is going on behind the reporting. — Mallard T. Drake

…and to add to my phrase which gave rise to this excellent analysis, journalism isn’t a profession, it’s a dodge.

Almost *EVERYONE* on this blog can write better, more succinctly and more clearly, than the even the best writers out doing it in the establishment press for a paycheck. Benjamin Franklin, in a piece credited to him but not explicitly authorized by him (see, I could work at the AP) stated that the 10% who could write a coherent sentence were, by the power of the press, empowered to dump on the 90% who couldn’t (or, I presume, wouldn’t, prefering honest employment.

Fact gathering doesn’t appear to have any bearing on journalism, so writing ability must be the sole criterion, and the overwhelming majority of them just aren’t very good writers…full stop.

So, as a job and as a college major track, it’s a dodge. Make sh*t up. Write it down. Submit it for grade. Get issued your sheepskin. *POOF* You’re a professional.

I wonder what engineers, health-care personnel, soldiers, telecommunications professionals, and even child-care providers think of such an unregulated “profession”, held to no standards of either conduct or accountability. Imagine someone as work-a-day and unpretentious as a glazier or a plumber…the dowdy old plumber…being able to throw out any and all code that interferes with his plans. We’d all of us be up to our navels in sewage.

…which, if you think of it, is where we’re at as far as journalism is concerned.

If it’s a business, it’s a mighty shoddy one…but it’s, as I said, a good dodge. First you set the standards for yourself, then you can change ‘em whenever you feel like it.

It’s like what Louis B. Mayer said about the moving picture business: you can sell your product but still retain posession of it. Priceless.

Puritan1648 on December 4, 2006 at 3:39 PM