The American Spectator

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Media Matters

(Page 2 of 2)

But reporters are the worst. Indeed, among reporters, detachment from reality whole and entire becomes the rule rather than the exception. Before the 2004 election, any number of journalists referred to the "tanking stock market" or "the stock market on the skids." This in the very week that the Dow notched its fifth straight weekly gain. In the middle of the Iraq war, similarly, pundits pointed sneeringly to the President's supposed desire to "bring down gasoline prices in America." Pump prices had been falling for a month.

My Dad and I long ago had the best idea for educating journalists. Forget J-school. Take a bunch of college-educated kids hungry to write and publish a real newspaper. Every student would have to sell enough ads to qualify to write. The more ads you sold, the more column inches you earned.

George Bernard Shaw properly called journalism "writing on the backs of advertisements." Somehow, today's reporters have completely lost sight of that fact.

topics:
Television, Business, Law, Iraq, NATO