Good morning to the journalists and pundits who spent three and a half years pooh-poohing any suggestion we might be heading down a road to authoritarianism and doing backflips to contort everything that led us here into some semblance of normality
The ultimate tragedy of what’s happening isn’t that it came out of nowhere. It’s that it was so blatantly obvious every step of the way, and could perhaps have been prevented, had every headline from mid-2015 onwards fulfilled the basic role of journalism to warn the public.
“What did you do as your democracy crumbled in front of the world, Daddy/Mommy?”
“I RePoRtEd BoTh SiDeZ EqUaLlY, JoHnNy.”
I went to a great journalism school, and I can tell you part of the problem is that we are programmed from day one of class that balance is the goal of good reporting. Journalism is not a scale. You have to manipulate scales into not tipping. Journalism should be a mirror.
Sorry, I’m a little bitter today. I wish the field I was born into and believe in with all my being had fulfilled its true role. There has been some excellent reporting, to be sure, but there was also a lot of ratings/click-obsessed, obtuse, elitist nonsense. And here we are.
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