(NaturalNews) When I first began writing for a living, I asked my boss/mentor at the time what was the most important thing he had learned in his years as a writer and editor. His answer: “Never believe anything you read.”
I knew he was being somewhat ironic, but after a while, I began to see how truly accurate his words were. As a newbie freelancer, I was often expected to write about things I knew very little about. I was required to perform a little research on the subject at hand and then expound upon the given topic as if I were an expert.
As I continued in the profession, I began to realize that most — if not nearly all — of what passes as “journalism” these days is basically the same thing. Most journalists rely on secondhand sources. What ends up being published is often highly suspect at best and written by someone with little or no firsthand knowledge of the subject at hand.
One of the last real journalists
Glenn Greenwald is an exception. He is one of the few journalists working today who has any real credibility and one of the few people qualified to criticize the state of journalism as it exists today.
Greenwald has recently written an op-ed for The Intercept, a news site he created in 2014 with the goal of “producing fearless, adversarial journalism” created to “bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions.”
He has already achieved a great deal towards this end as one of the main journalists responsible for breaking the Edward Snowden story while revealing the extent of the NSA’s programs designed to spy on U.S. citizens.
In the op-ed titled “A Crucial Realization About Journalism is Learned by Being its Subject”, Greenwald explores the experience of encountering journalistic pieces written by “outsiders” on subjects one is intimately acquainted with. When this happens, he says, one often gets an enlightening glimpse of just how inaccurate the information can be.
Read more: http://www.naturalnews.com/050904_journalism_objectivity_Glenn_Greenwald.html