It’s difficult to describe how awful modern journalism has become. It is preening, biased, ignorant, vainglorious, arrogant, unfair, corrupt, vindictive, smug, anti-science, and stupid beyond measure. It hasn’t always been this way. Vintage news hawks reveled in their role as a yellow rabble of ill-educated, over-intoxicated, ink-stained wretches. Today’s reporters, inconceivably, consider themselves our betters.
Their pretension to status is puzzling. Perhaps, they could have been lawyers but lacked the intelligence or study skills. Or politicians, but they’re too socially awkward. Engineering is out of the question; they don’t know math. Science, too, as it requires critical thinking. Not good-looking enough to be Hollywood celebrities, not entrepreneurial enough to create businesses, not courageous enough to be out-of-the closet activists, let alone out-of-the-box artists. The only requirement for modern journalism is a rudimentary ability to stitch sentences together at forty words per minute. For on-camera talent, not even that. Contrary to recruitment pitches from the Columbia School of Journalism, reporting is a trade, not a profession.