LOOKING FOR JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS

Looking For Journalistic Standards

  I have been a journalist for 74 years when I started at the age of 8 writing a local elementary school column for Uncle Cliff's Liberty Gazette.

  I'm a college journalism graduate and also graduated from the U.S. Navy Journalism School and the Armed Forces Editors School and all these wonderful years I have been writing for various publications either as a reporter, photo journalist, publisher, editor and columnist. 

  What I'm seeing today is the demise of journalistic standards.

  There was a time not so long ago when journalist were trusted and admired and were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straight-forward manner.

  Today, all that has changed. 

  What we see today is journalism  that is intentional bias and filled with hostility.

  For most of the media, bias grew out of the social revolution of the 1960's and 70's.

  The critical question now ask's can the American media be fixed and is there anything that we as individuals can do to make a difference....the short answer is No, it can't be fixed. The beginning of the year 2107 confirms that the standards are still dead.

  While the media should, in theory, broadly reflect the public, it doesn't.....too much of the media acts like a special interest group....detached from the greater good, it exists to promote its own interest and the political party with which it is aligned.

  The mismatch between the mainstream media and the public's sensibilities means there is a vast untapped market for news and views that are not now represented.

  The bottom line is that the behavior of much of the media is a disgrace and that media will never recover the public trust it has squandered.