Reporters\Journalists and Subject Matter "Experts"

[Gargamel]

I've noticed that a few things have shifted in the "Internet Age" outside of the normal industries normally thought of "technologically focused".

Media seems to come to mind, specifically reporters\journalists and subject matter "experts"

Before the days of the internet, journalists for the big 3 (ABC, NBC, CBS) as well as the big publications in print (NYT, WP, Time Magazine) were touted as intelligent, college educated people that stood by common ethics as they managed sources and searched for actual facts and truth.

Today, with the age of the internet a "journalist" is anyone with an internet connection and an opinion (which is pretty much anyone).

"Facts" seem to be anything typed in Wikipedia.

Subject matter "experts"... from Constitutional Scholars who don't seem to be reading the same document as everyone else to Defense Pundits who don't know the difference between an F-15 and P-51... seem to get their "expertise" by watching YouTube.

So.... I believe that there are two options here:

1. These people were always idiots with agendas and it is just now easier to see the "man behind the curtain"
2. Culture, Technology and the Human Condition have combined to set us down the path of some sort of combination of Orwellian nightmare and sad comedy in the vein of "Idiocracy"

Each option comes with chilling realizations and challenges for the future....

[bird_dog0347]

The internet has given everyone a platform to voice their opinion to those who otherwise never would have heard it. Since they tend to get the best reactions among like minded (or absent minded) people that's where it turns into an echo chamber.

[SS Junk]

Anymore news is gathered by those barely out of their teens/20's who are generally really lazy. The TV industry doesn't pay reporters much of anything anymore therefore those who take those jobs are college aged kids hungry for a career and willing to make fuck all for a salary while living in an apt. with six other people. The reason why you hear network affiliates all over the states parrot each other is because of the ease of copy/pasting scripts directly off AP, Reuters and other news wires as well as a news director sticking with an agenda.

[Nash B.]