Sneer When You Say 'Journalist'
Like most habits, this one took hold without any conscious choice. I only realized I had been doing it--hiding my occupation--when a stranger caught me off guard. His name was Phil, and he had joined my group on a public golf course. In a quiet moment on the 17th hole we had an exchange. As I recall it:
"So Mike, what do you do for a living?"
"I'm a writer."
"Really, what kind?"
"Nonfiction. You know, journalism."
"Wow. The perks must be great."
"What?"
"You know, the things that people give you--trips and stuff--so you will write what they want."
"I don't do that."
"Yeah, right."
I don't believe that Phil winked, but he didn't have to. The inference was clear: Of course I take bribes. I'm a journalist. That's what we do. For good measure he also told me that he doesn't believe much of what he gets from the press in general. It's all biased and deceptive.
Taken alone, his comments might mean little. But at the time, journalists were taking a beating. The New York Times had just fired reporter Jayson Blair for a pattern of lies and fabrications in his articles. (Eventually the paper's two top editors also would be forced out.) Weeks earlier, the Salt Lake Tribune had dismissed two reporters for secretly shoveling material on the Elizabeth Smart story to the National Enquirer, taking cash as a reward and then lying about it.
With these scandals, every Phil in America could feel justified in his low opinion of journalists. A national survey last year by the Pew Research Center for the Public and the Press found that just 21% of respondents said they believe "all or most" of what they read in their local papers. In fact, the public's level of trust in journalists has been going south for 14 years, as illustrated in a sidebar to the Blair fiasco. It turns out that some of the people he betrayed never complained because they didn't expect a reporter, even one from the New York Times, to get it right in the first place. One of them, a teacher in Ohio named Carol Klingel, explained to a Los Angeles Times reporter: "You expect people are going to get misquoted, or quoted out of context."
Such comments appall my colleagues and make me embarrassed about my trade. The professionals in my circle of devoted and veteran (read middle-aged and older) editors and writers are working as diligently as ever. Yet in the span of their careers, they have gone from respected to ridiculed. They feel overmatched by forces beyond their control, like firefighters in a howling wind.
