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“Professional standards” in journalism
The kind of principles that now govern news coverage: Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic and Religious Profiling, adopted by the Society of Professional Jounalists shortly after September 11. Some basic rules: don’t call Islamic terrorists “Islamic terrorists,” constantly remind the reader of bombings by white supremacists, and if you have to show a U.S. official make sure it’s a Muslim lady with a headscarf. The evident goal of the rules isn’t accuracy, intelligent interpretation, or diversity of opinion. It’s coloring the facts to advance a uniform preconceived interpretation. It seems that doing so is part of the basic demand of “professionalism,” in journalism as elsewhere: always to act in the interest of professionalizing all social relations, which involves (among other things) abolishing the religious, ethnic and sexual distinctions upon which traditional social relations often turn. Posted by Jim Kalb at June 04, 2003 08:22 AM | Send Comments
Dr. Goebbels would be proud, though undoubtedly perplexed as to why we are propangandizing more toward the benefit of our enemies than our own country. Posted by: Joel on June 10, 2003 6:28 PMIt is largely the tendency of experts, professionals, bureaucrats, and associated providers of information and opinion to act in the interests of their own class that results in the propaganda, and that class does not as such have a country. Posted by: Jim Kalb on June 10, 2003 6:55 PMMr. Kalb, you have just made, in few words, a truly terrifying observation. Very well said. Thank God this wasn’t the case 60 years ago, but what it bodes for tomorrow is a dark question. Posted by: Joel on June 10, 2003 7:44 PM |