Seeing as there are certain strict guidelines about how journalists write, most notably, I think, being that journalists aren’t supposed to be biased and, thusly, must not use “I” or put opinions in their articles, I’m curious what good that does.
First of all, I’m curious when the person, the “I,” was taken out of journalism. For instance, thinking back to Addison, Defoe, etc. There was no distinction, as I understand it, between journalism, fiction, nonfiction, etc. They were journalists who used also fiction to make a point. Right? When did that change, to where literature, scholarly journals, dictionaries, newspapers, etc. became seperated into their various categories. It seems like that’s one of the bad results of the Enlightenment, is that there is a sort of prismic seperation of written materials. Giving the illusion that they aren’t meant to serve the same purpose.
Hope this is making sense.
Now, I’m all about journalists telling the truth, but is it really possible to eliminate bias? Is it better to have the illusion of unbiased journalism, or just to come out and present exactly how one feels?
Finally, does anyone think that the internet can do in the 21st century, what the printing press did for the 16-18th centuries? By this I mean, in the same sense that a large reason that the enlightenment occured was that information was more readily available to a larger group of people, right? Written materials were far easier to produce and diffuse. Well, shouldn’t the internet do the same thing? For instance, in China, the way the government is trying so hard to sensor the internet, but little by little it is starting to look like it is outside their reach to control free thought.
I’m starting to believe that the enlightenment never ended, that we’re still in it, and the more information is readily available, we may be able to see a true democritization of the world (I use that word loosely and hesitantly, only because I can’t think of a better way to put it).
I suppose there are issues of, for instance, the fact that at some point (or already) there gets to be a point where there is too much information for people to process.
That’s all I can think of for now.