In High School, teachers taught that being a journalist meant reporting facts about factual events. Looking back I realize this was just a cover story to the truth behind what our teachers were truly trying to get us, their students, to do.
If our stories were not colorful enough or didn’t grab the attention of the readers within those first three sentences, we were chastised and given a low grade. We were encouraged to be flamboyant and, inevitably, to make up stories… all the while we were told… “report the facts” and “make it sound interesting and grab your readers”.
Sorry Mrs. Hypocrite… I didn’t make the grade. Why? Was it truly because I just wasn’t good at writing interesting news articles or was it because I was confused as to what I was supposed to do in order to get a good grade in the class?
I walked away from that year confused and frustrated. I DID report the facts and I thought I made it interesting… but when I look back at those old High School newspapers, I realize that the students that “made the grade” were those that made a factual event into an exaggerated, fantastic experience that… in some cases… never happened. I was green, I realize that, but I thought I was a bad writer… that I sucked at being a journalist and reporting the news. The truth was that I DID report the news; the true news… and I was given a bad grade for doing it.
That being said, I was also shy and reclusive and interviewing people was very difficult for me… some might say that my lack of self esteem may be a cause for not writing a good article. For the sake of “playing fair”, that may be partially true… but for the sake of “being honest”, it’s only partially true. Even if I had never interviewed a soul… if I had made my articles shine and jump off the page, it wouldn’t have mattered if truth was involved.
How long have the educators of our children been expressing to them the morals of society with back-stage whispering that it’s okay to break the rules so long as it is to the benefit of “those in charge”… wink, wink… nudge, nudge… say no more.
Lets just say it’s been happening for at least the last 40 years… at least. And those who insist that journalist tell more and more white lies and more and more exaggerated stories are the true villains. Journalist MUST make their news sound like life and death… they MUST grab the reader’s attention and reel them in. Reel them in to what? Not the truth… that’s not what matters any more. They reel them in to lies and twisted realities to change the world we live in.
One day these educators and back-whispers just may get what they ultimately THOUGHT they wanted… a society of people who do what they are told because they want so desperately to fit in with the elitist. If that day arrives… they will be slapped in the face and stand there wondering what went wrong.
It’s really not fun controlling people who need babysitters.
