Old-school journalism—a time when the profession was known for serious (sometimes life-threatening) investigative work and a passion to find the truth.
This is a quick review of what once was, what has become, and a look at the chance of returning to those old standards.
This from patriotpost.us.
This article is in part about Ron Yates, an old school journalist, award-winning author of historical fiction and action/adventure novels, a former foreign correspondent, and Professor Emeritus of Journalism at the University of Illinois where he was also the Dean of the College of Media.
Yates covered some of the most harrowing global events of the 20th century, including the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon, the collapse of Cambodia to the communist Khmer Rouge regime, and the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China. He received numerous awards for his work and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, including in 1976, the year he lost to Sydney Schanberg from The New York Times, who won for his coverage of the fall of Phnom Penh. (Schanberg’s story was made famous by the Academy Award-winning film, “The Killing Fields,” in which his character was played by Sam Waterston.)
Now, what about the media’s role in their seemingly endless massive propaganda campaigns for the past many years?
I decided to contact Ron after watching the most recent Orwellian media makeover: The press is now telling the public that new presidential nominee Kamala Harris was never really the ‘border czar,’ despite Joe Biden having bestowed those responsibilities upon her and despite that being the title the media themselves have used the past three years.
I wanted Ron’s take on the state of modern journalism in the United States. His assessment, as you might expect, was scathing.
Ron Yates began by describing a recent Reuters poll that asked residents from 46 different countries about their trust in media.
And where did the United States place?
He answered his question:
Dead last. Only 29% of Americans trust the media. Even post-communist countries like Romania and the Czech Republic are better!
Yates explained:
Americans don’t trust the press, because they know media personalities are twisting facts to fit their preferred political narrative and suppressing information that doesn’t.
We’re being gaslit. For three and a half years, we all watched Biden decline, but we were being told, ‘He’s sharp as a tack.’
Yates identified several causes of the problem:
– First, journalism schools are no longer teaching their students the craft.
– – When I was in school, what was pounded into our heads was to be as objective as possible. Subvert your own biases; if you don’t, you just become a propagandist.
He compared this with today’s journalism graduates:
[They] don’t think it’s their job to report the news; they think it’s their job to get people to make the ‘right’ choices.
Yates bemoaned the loss of the traditional newsroom.
– Second, young journalists had mentors who helped them weed opinions out of news articles.
– – Accuracy was so important. If you continued to include your opinion or inaccuracies, you were fired.
He also pointed out the current distorted balance of political viewpoints:
In 1971 when I started, 26% of reporters identified as Republicans, 35% as Democrats and the rest as ‘independents’ or unaffiliated.
Today, 71% of reporters identify as Democrats, about 25% as independents or ‘moderates.’ Only 4% identify as Republicans or conservatives.
He attributes much of this shift to the leftward lurch of higher education.
Ninety percent of the faculty at a lot of universities are leftists, and this is just as true of journalism schools.
Finally, Yates stated:
[T]he organization responsible for monitoring the profession—the Society of Professional Journalists—isn’t doing its job.
[T]he SPJ Code of Ethics page, which admonishes journalists to ‘seek truth and report it,’ ‘be accurate and fair,’ ‘label advocacy and commentary’ and hold ‘those with power accountable’ [is not being adhered to].
Further:
Today’s media doesn’t do any of that.
The SPJ needs to hold their feet to the fire, and they’re not doing it.
Yates was blunt about the challenges to Americans trying to get the facts.
He stated:
It’s not going to be easy. We have information overload. Media outlets—from both political sides—are not dealing in truth, so the onus falls upon the consumer, who has to look at what the liberal outlets are saying and what the conservative outlets are saying and decide for themselves what the truth is.
But most of the people you see on TV aren’t trained journalists; they just give their opinions. And the average American can’t tell the difference between opinion and journalism.
NOTE: Yates is encouraged by the proliferation of new media outlets like Substack and the Free Press, founded by former New York Times writer Bari Weiss; the increasing number of other journo expats like Uri Berliner, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, and Elon Musk’s purchase of X.
Yates concluded:
I hope that journalism in this country isn’t dead; that it’s only in a coma.
But it’s going to take a revolution in these newsrooms. Back to the old rules.
For a closer look at what Ron Yates has to say, checkout his blog site: ronaldyatesbooks.com/blog.
If you’d like to know what real journalists think about today’s events, there’s no better place to start.
Final thought: Perhaps President Trump or his staff will read this article or they may already know of Ron Yate’s work. I am confident returning the standard of journalism to that of the Old School is on #47’s ‘To-Do Immediately’ list.
