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How we are misinformed about world events
Good morning class, my name is William Boot and I’m your teacher for this semester. My job is to teach you the basics of journalism. I’m happy to see such an eager group of students sitting before me and I’m sure you’ll all do very well in your future careers, whether you’ll be a reporter for a national newspaper, a television anchor reading from a teleprompter, or an Internet blogger creating compelling content on one of the many social media outlets. No matter what form of career you end up pursuing, the basic rules of journalism will remain the same.
As journalists, you’ll be performing an essential role in society. Without you, ordinary people would be forced to rely entirely on movies and television shows for misleading information. Thanks to your efforts, they will gain the immeasurable benefit of also swallowing completely misleading information that is supposedly factual. Now, it’s important to remember that unlike crude propaganda outlets such as Pravda and Izvestia in Russia, Fox News in the USA, and pretty much every news outlet in India, Hungary, Poland, Pakistan, China, and of course North Korea, we don’t actually invent nonsense. Instead, we fashion nonsense not by lying but by careful omission.
This is a critical distinction and it’s what separates serious journalism from mere…
