I AM A JOURNALIST. SO ARE YOU.

[jazzimov]

115. Technically true, but are you a GOOD journalist?

You are a Professional journalist if you get paid for being one. You are a Leftist or Rightist journalist if your journalist posts lean that way - or, since those are perceptional views - if someone accuses your posts as such.

You are a "good" or "bad" journalist depending on prevailing views. At one time, the least "spin" you put on a subject and the more facts you reported the better the journalist you were perceived to be. But, again, these were all based on perceptions of your readers.

Therefore, many journalists are forced to choose a target market. If they are successful with this target market by telling them what they want to hear, then they are considered successful.

That is one of the problems with the modern journalist. When journalism was limited to the few, they had an extremely wide market that they had to appeal to, and they could do it with personality or established correct predictions. Today, anyone can advance a conspiracy theory and support it with pure BS - but as long as they are others willing to believe these BS conspiracy theories allowing that person to collect paid advertisement money, that person is considered a Legitimate Paid Journalist. For example, I give you Drudge.

Therefore, I trust NO source independently. I tend to read several sources and treating them all as "suspect". And then I decide for myself, based on reports that I find the most verifiable and my own conclusions.