Journalists as Ideologues

Journalists as Ideologues

Plumes of smoke emerged from the buildings, people stood shocked all over New York City unable to look down from the tragedy occurring before their eyes. The Twin Towers were hit by two hijacked planes taking them from their high of 1368 feet crashing to the Earth below. Lives were taken, families were ruined, and America was threatened. This immensely emotional occasion had the news in a frenzy. Hundreds of stories, reports, and videos were created and distributed all over the country. Did journalists stay unbiased; did reporters keep their emotions out of these stories? Situations like the destruction of the Twin Towers are extremely difficult to report on when there is such an intense emotional application. I believe the idea that journalists can become ideologues in their reporting, but I don’t believe this is a negative thing.

Many would say that ideologues are blocking the whole truth, but I say if we have enough ideologue journalists then every side can be represented. Without the ideologue style of writing stories would be very distant, boring, and lack the emotional draw. Journalists should be reporting the feelings and thoughts of situations and stories so that the true story comes through.

In a more negative look toward ideologues one could bring up the idea of reporting on religion. Will someone with a different religious view report accurately about a religion or will they block the whole truth? For situations like this I still believe that ideological views or not necessarily bad. Sure one might skip over a few facts about a religion causing people to think differently about that religion, but then the next reporter comes along and fills in the missing pieces. Media is such a large part of our society today that there’s never too little. The facts all eventually come out anyway, so why not have a few different points of view.