By Ben Mullin
Getting a job is hard. Getting a job in newspapers is extremely hard. Getting a job at a nationally-circulated newspaper is about as difficult, painful and time-consuming as removing your left-front molar with a feather boa.
This is why, as an aspiring reporter, I was disgusted with a lot of people when the News of the World scandal broke earlier this month.
Those so-called journalists get paid by the wheelbarrow to write, talk to important people and travel the world.
They”re supposed to pay attention to what we should be paying attention to. And they used their influence to violate the privacy of their readers; the very people whose rights they have a duty to protect.
I”m angry. I”m prepared to do more fist-shaking than Rupert Murdoch does when the neighborhood kids TP his house with unread copies of The Sun. I”m ready to wag my finger until it becomes an arthritic claw. Unfortunately, the managers over at The News of the World aren”t around to take it on the chin.
They will undoubtedly go on to lucrative industry jobs, which will allow them to build a third mansion for storing all their ill-gotten cash.
Instead, I want to shake my fist at the people who really caused this problem, which is problematic, because I don”t have six million fists. The person responsible for the bias toward sensationalism in newspapers that caused this scandal is … me.
Not just me, though. It could also be you and everyone you know who pays to receive fast, interesting news 24 hours a day on several different news networks.
It”s anyone who sits through the commercials on TMZ or watches wall-to-wall coverage of the Casey Anthony trial.
News of the World”s bias toward sensationalism could not have existed without a healthy readership to support it.
We get fed whatever news we choose to consume. We are sold the stories we choose to buy.
Whenever someone makes an argument for the necessity of organized print journalism as opposed to online aggregator news outlets like The Huffington Post, they often point out that printed media is more reputable, subject to several rounds of editing and extensive public scrutiny. The importance of getting the story ethically, in other words, is prioritized over the importance of getting the story fast.
News of the World, an industry standard that was around before the New York Times, has just proved that print journalism can be more dangerous to the public than its online competitors because of the resources its organized structure affords. The average blogger can”t bribe a government official, or hire a private detective to hack into voicemail.
As of July 4, News of the World became a cautionary tale, the best argument against organized printed news anyone”s ever made.
Because of the way the paper told its stories, it was torn down by the public who made it a success. Because I paid attention to those stories, getting a job in newspapers just got a little harder.
Ben Mullin is a Lake County native and an English/journalism student attending California State University, Chico. He will spend his summer as a contributor to the Record-Bee. You can reach him at BenjaminMullin14@hotmail.com.
