Last week, I heard a fascinating show on NPR discussing journalistic ethics and the presidential campaign. You can probably guess the main topics discussed: the relative ignorance of the average voter, whether journalists should vote or contribute to campaigns, FOX news, that sort of thing. The conversation was fascinating to me, mainly because it was a great example of the move from modernism to post-modernism.

This way of listening struck home, when a caller phoned in and said….

Why can’t we just have things like they used to be? When I was growing up, we didn’t worry about journalists’ political affiliation, they just reported in a balanced and unbiased way, and we read the facts. Why all this talk of bias, different perspectives, and the like? I wish we could just get back to how I remember it: when the facts were the facts and that’s what reporters reported.

I laughed out loud. I sympathize with the caller, but the “facts” of previous generations were just as biased and reflective of culture and perspective as today–actually, probably much more so. We can’t put the proverbial monkey back in its cage.

We must talk about how journalists meld their personal opinions to their news stories, because they’ve always been doing so whether we like it or not.

We must talk about advertising dollars and the news media because it’s really all about readership.

We must talk about 24-hour cable news channels because they dumb down the public square to tickers on the bottom of the screen and some star’s latest hi-jinx.

It’s a complicated world out there. The monkey is free range.  And I love it.

image by Dave Hiebert