Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/12/northwestern-journalism-studen.html
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Fear of and hostility towards journalists and the independent press are not nor have they ever been the exclusive purview of the political right. Unlike the right though, the left has a counterbalancing desire for truth, while truth is the evergreen enemy of the right. Students, including student journalists are going to make mistakes as they learn. School administrations have less claim to that excuse.
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This is a comment reacting to a post reacting to a newspaper’s reaction to the reaction to its reaction to the reaction to its coverage of a protest reacting to Jeff Sessions, who frankly does not deserve all this hullaballoo
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Ten or twenty years ago I was a lot more sympathetic to the idea that we’d be better off abolishing media gatekeepers completely and turning everyone into the editor-in-chief of their own media outlet.
I’m… not sympathetic to that idea any more. And if I had to pick a single reason why, it would be the realisation that any public debate is corrosively shitty unless at least one “side” is not moronic.
In this case, we have the infantile “gotcha” reflex of the idiot right vs. the “oh no, the correct sensitivity rituals weren’t followed, which is more important than anything” piety of the highly-online. Neither side has a point, there’s no lesson to learn, and thousands have had a little shot of bile inserted into their day for nothing. None of it should ever have been put in front of a global audience.
I’m not trying to hand out blame here, but can we just agree that we are paying far too much attention to arguments between nitwits, and it’s a problem?
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And there’s not even a way to see what was written that caused the hullabaloo, so it’s a story built on references about references to a thing that may or may not have caused an asinine non-freakout for potentially, if likely, asinine reasons.
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I think this is THE quote for our time.
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allegedly.
You better believe I’m gonna photograph this post and severely retraumatize your ass by publishing it
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“I’m not trying to hand out blame here, but can we just agree that we are paying far too much attention to arguments between nitwits, and it’s a problem?”
…and this is why I quit reading the Daily Northwestern regularly twenty years ago. It’s a bunch of college students. They get all worked up about stuff adults just sigh at and dismiss. And they tend to make mistakes that no serious working journalist should make, because they’re students, learning their trade.
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