Beyond the jokes, let's be honest here for a moment, and try to make real news the news for a moment. News produced with any intent of conforming to any notion of narrative is an act of propaganda. Also, any effort to produce anything but real news is also an act of propaganda, even when it is accidentally produced or results from ignorance. Yes, I said that. The act of journalism is a very narrowly constrained and objective reporting style which is corrupted by any attempt to mesh opinion or interpretation into its reportage. Subjectivity of any type, even at the word level, should be kept separate from the reportage--it's the reason there's always been an Editorial Section in newspapers.
Journalists are allowed to express their opinions, just not in the same part of the paper where their reporting is being done. It's not that problematic a notion. It's the same thing as separation of Church and State--an idea that we all claim to pay lip-service to, but cannot fathom allowing to actually occur. But it's the law! We must keep our religious convictions out of our lawmaking. It's also the same thing as keeping personal preferences out of the workplace. Employers are all-too-eager to tell their employees not to put their personal choices into communications when they are working, and that eventually spills over into all actions taken by employees when they are working. Every time you hear expressions which result in the assessment that employees represent their employers in their personal lives, you are being told that people are nothing more than their jobs. You wouldn't want to know that your 401K portfolio was being managed by a punk rock fan who enjoys The Dead Kennedys as much as he does The Clash, would you? Or a country bumpkin who likes Dixie Chicks as much as he likes Dolly Parton? But, you might have noticed that I am favoring the male pronoun at the expense of the female portion of my reading market. Sorry, it's because I'm a guy who cannot be permitted to represent the female portion of my audience because I would probably misrepresent them--Guys are inherently wrong. So, it is better to remain silent in order to prevent rampant offenses at the mere utterance of any off-color suggestion, right? Amirite? After all, it's the same thing as employees being told to do nothing more than represent their employers when they are acting as spokespersons for the company.
Comment with things that need to be added to this rant, but please try to remain civil. Hateful and profane comments will be blocked, but their content will probably be added to future revisions of this text.
