Misfortune's Apprentice

All of a sudden, an issue I didn't want to care about seems to be the only thing dominating the news. Michael Duff, The New York Post, Ace of Spades and seemingly everyone else in the free world is focused on this issue. I am a latecomer to the table. Mr. Duff (whom if you don't already read, you should) wrapped up the issue rather nicely (in my opinion) when he said:

This is the worst kind of nonsense. Journalists don't know shit about shit. All they can do is write. What they're good at, what they're supposed to be good at, is finding people who know what they're talking about and translating their expertise into language that makes sense to normal people. That is the essence of journalism, and once you stop doing that, you're not really a journalist at all.

(I feel like a stalker for the amount of times I have quoted Michael Duff. Sorry man, I won't let it happen again.)

For a while now, in my personal conversations and other writings, I have stated the media has no regard for the truth. Truth, to them is what can be edited or created to fit the facts as they (or their editors and moneymen) see them. It seems only recently has this bias and disregard fully come to light. Reporters that make up their facts and (apparently) a news organization so greedy for a possible scoop that fact checking is disregarded, seem to be the most visible symptoms of this infection.

Was it not in grade school that I learned to double and triple check my sources? Was that not the same time that I learned that journalism once had a hand in exposing the abuses of business to the common man? That there was a tradition of bringing the actual truth to light?

How the mighty have fallen.