Journalism-- a silly craft

I like(d) to write and I was so excited when I got into a communications school and majored in journalism. I was going to be a journalist--a respectable, professional, and more importantly, an intellectually stimulating career.

Now, a few years on, I look back and I wonder and I know I don't feel the same about it anymore. During my second year, we were asked to read readings that debate whether journalist can be considered a "professional". The consensus seems to be that it wasn't. Lawyers, architects, engineers are; journalists aren't. You do not need specialist knowledge; you don't really even need an university degree.

That's not the main point. The whole debate seems lame and self-indulgent. That I won't be considered a professional didn't bother me much--after all, journalists are well respected in my country, and unusually, they are well paid too. (I know, because I've processed the tax returns of a mid-level newsperson once, when I was temping for the tax department) They are seen as brainy people. I want to be seen as being an intellectual.

Journalist wannabes are the wannabes of wannabes, if you ask me, right down there with inspiring actors/singers--they are all just as egotistical.

They all think they have depth; they can write; their prose affect and mobilise people; they can change the world with their scribblings.

After 4 years of journalism school and of scrutinising the local papers, I don't know what to think. I think that journalists do not write the truth; they sensationalise the truth. Editors and lecturers are always exhorting about news values: why would readers want to read or know about this? What would catch their attention? Why is this story worth publishing? What new angles can be purported?

So we, as journalism students, with the commendable aims of trying to outdo each other and to get as good a grade as possible, wrung every drop of juicy bits we could out of the news. We're not lying, but.

I've even committed the ultimate journalism sin of making up a quote because I was not able to get what I wanted from the interview subjects.

In a small, safe country like ours, with so many people chasing after so little news, it's hard. I get sceptical, I can detect when a journalist is trying to make something out of nothing--it's just a waste of the reader's time and the newsprint. It's not respectable anymore, is it? It's not even intellectually stimulating, is it? It's just silly. And some of them, they are not even truthful about what they're trying to say (I'm talking about politics here). They sway readers not with objective facts but with innuendos, connotations, embedding them in the text with carefully chosen words that are not neutral. That's sneaky.