[ Golden Gater Online - December 11, 1997 ]
This fall was a vintage season for columnists at Bay Area universities.
I'm not talking about my weekly assaults on random targets, either. I'm talking about my opinion-page colleagues who garnered national attention because of their treatment of the president's daughter. First, a Stanford columnist got fired for going against the paper's policy and mentioning she-who-cannot-be-named. And then there was the fracas over at Berkeley when a columnist advised his schoolmates to kick Chelsea's ass in the name of their big game against Stanford.
All hell broke loose. USA Today ran a story about the Daily Cal's printed apology. The first lady saw it and allegedly sent Secret Service agents to the upstart's apartment to search everything but his body cavities. And it was all because a newspaper decided a few off-color comments by a student columnist were worthy of national attention. Why would they blow up such a small-scale media-bashing story?
Because everybody hates the media. Need a scapegoat for societal problems? Blame the bad boys you see on television, hear on the radio and read in the bylines of the newspaper.
They slant stories. They under report important events and over report the mundane. They don't represent minorities and hound celebrities. The papers are owned by unfeeling corporations, and reporters are corporate pawns. They're ambulance chasers, hot-issue vultures and politician's whores. If they really want to clean the house, muckraking journalists should at least wipe their shit-encrusted shoes on the mat before coming in.
Yeah, yeah. The main reason I hate the media is because it caters to this drivel. Public opinion is the lifeblood of an advertisement-based industry such as the media. In the big scheme of things, a newspaper's product is people, who are sold to the paper's advertisers. Because papers want to sell as many people as possible, every passing whim of the public is coddled in order to increase their stockpile. The end result is that a reporter's main duty is to be the public's bitch covering what the people want to hear in a style they're comfortable with. So they attack the paparazzi "responsible" for Princess Di's death all the while sensationalizing the story themselves, or they criticize the Berkeley columnist's words while giving him a bigger voice. They're really just giving the public the anti-media hand job they yearn for.
And that's just one of the reasons I can't stand the field.
I can remember feeling different, I thought journalism was my freakin' calling, or something. But the last year and a half in the department changed my mind. The basics of newswriting seemed straightforward enough, almost scientific. But the social responsibilities stressed by the department seemed warped, contradictory to scientific fact-collecting. In courses that rang like sensitivity seminars, I learned how cautious reporters must be not to step on toes, or at least to step on the right toes. I've seen stories canceled because of a fear of offending the wrong person, one of whom was a pretty offensive racist himself. The department's priority seems to be diversity, and reporters are trained to be selective in the fights they pick. It's hardly conducive to my belief that flailing wildly at everything will always flush out at least some truth.
Ahh, hell. This page has been a blast to do. It's been entertaining and therapeutic, a school-sanctioned weekly tantrum. Aside from a few moments during which I thought I had entirely lost my writing skills -- like right now -- my columns squeezed out easier than Cheez Whiz.
Sure, I got angry letters, and even managed to piss off some people in the department. Big fucking deal -- what's the use of having an opinion if everyone agrees with it? After being called some imaginative names in the latest letter I received, I can recite the old saying that "opinions are like assholes -- everyone's got one" and append it with the possibility that the biggest assholes are the most opinionated. But that's not exactly the case. Opinions should make a point. For that point to penetrate the thick, leathery hide of the student body, it must be razor sharp and barbed so it's not easily removed.
So anyway, I'm taking my degree and filing it with the rest of my useless papers. I'll be grinding away my days at a machine shop for a while, but who knows? Maybe someday I'll change my mind about this trade.
[ Golden Gater - December 11, 1997 ]