Here’s an odd thing for a political commentator to be writing about, journalism. In this case I’m talking about news journalists; those who are designated to take accounts, dig deep into a story and report on the facts. Sadly over many years news media has slowly died and turned into a form of political commentary. What do I mean by this? Well with the divide created as “progressivism” was introduced to the United States the political parties chose their sides and so did the news media. Our country wasn’t always liberal vs conservative, it was two different versions of libertarian. I’m conservative because I believe in many of those old-time worldviews that founded our nation in the first place. While arguments in the past were still as heated, they weren’t based on completely opposing principles. The majority of Americans shared the same religious values, and understanding of liberty. Now-a-days it is less of federalist vs anti-federalist and more authoritarian-left vs libertarian-right. America went from debating over a federal bank, to whether free markets are right in the first place. Why am I talking about this divide? Well when we’re forced to choose between two sides, we get two completely opposing views of an issue. Journalism started to only reflect what matters to one’s political affiliation.
Over time as the nation’s media capital became increasingly left-wing our national media became oblivious to the other half of the country. So now there has been a new call for unbias news, or at least for them to look unbias. When I think of news, journalism and reporting I think of professional people recalling what they witnessed. Instead, people have suggested that it is impossible to be unbias, therefore news agencies should higher a philosophically diverse group of people who will build on each other. Unlike many believe, I don’t see this as being unbias. Say you have a conservative who keeps up on the White House while you have a liberal who investigates behind protests. You’re still going to receive bias news, but your agency is going to be at constant battle with itself. Even if you have two opposing people working on the same industry each of their accounts will be bias and you won’t know which is closer to fact. This is why I do not feel journalism is where I should be. I want to influence and/or convince, which should not be the job of a journalist. Certainly I could try to be a journalist, but what I currently do shouldn’t be compared to it. There might even be organizations that want me to diversify their reports, but I do not believe that is how reporting or journalism should work. If there is a mass shooting and you hired a conservative and a liberal for their biases, you’ll get an analysis of national security and an analysis on gun control. Unbias media will simply say “there was a shooting, this is what we know.” Apparently that is too hard to organize in modern day. No one seems to attempt unbias news on the national level, but instead hires all these people who disagree with each other.
There is a place for liberal and conservative media, but it’s not exactly the best kind of news. Most of what we consider liberal and conservative media is just political commentary with some loosely cited information. Basically if I added a “Works Cited” tab on my page I could call my website a “news” resource by this line of thinking. That’s exactly what Buzzfeed did and they’re about as news-worthy as Saturday Night Live. Local news is a bit more reliable but they still suffer from this battle over good journalism. I’m fine with these things existing, but I just wish there were more groups that took themselves seriously and simply existed to show us the truth. If you can’t prove something and might be the last person to report on it that’s ok, at least your audience can trust you.