Journalists, it seems to me, have two main jobs:
- Discover and report the news accurately and
- Write up the results of their investigations in a clear and easy to understand way.
It’s no secret to Irreal readers that I think they’re failing significantly in the first. In most cases, the best you can hope for is that they’re ignorant of the subject they’re reporting on and that they’re too lazy to educate themselves. Sadly, it’s depressingly common for them to also corrupt the journalism enterprise by pushing preferred narratives regardless of what the facts say. Having the facts wrong—for whatever reason—is not new. In 2002, Michael Crichton, author of The Andromeda Strain, Sphere, and Jurassic Park among many others, spoke about this in a famous speech where he coined the term Gell-Man Amnesia Effect. The TL;DR is that you shouldn’t believe anything you read in a newspaper; they almost certainly have it wrong.
But at least they can still write. Right? Maybe not. Branko over at Substack has an article that asks,“When did writing in major newspapers become so bad?” Once you come to understand their failures on the first aspect of their job, you probably stop reading the papers as much so you might not notice their failures on the second. Until someone like Branko points it out.
Not all newspaper writing is as bad as the examples that Branko gives but some is and it makes you wonder what they’re teaching in J-School these days.
Update : Deleted superfluous “to.”