{"id":241019,"date":"2023-08-07T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=241019"},"modified":"2023-08-05T06:02:11","modified_gmt":"2023-08-05T05:02:11","slug":"mainstream-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/08\/mainstream-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Mainstream Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>It\u2019s not just the obscenely wealthy owners of the mass media who are protecting their class interests, it\u2019s the reporters&#8211;cloistered Ivy League-educated trust fund\u00a0kids&#8211;, editors and pundits as well.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_241020\" style=\"width: 510px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-241020\" class=\"wp-image-241020\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building-1024x536.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"262\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building-1024x536.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building-300x157.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building-768x402.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/new-york-times-nyt-building.jpeg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-241020\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Caitlin Johnstone<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>4 Aug 2023 &#8211; <\/em>Iraq war cheerleader David Brooks has an article in The New York Times titled \u201c<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/AtKre\" >What if We\u2019re the Bad Guys Here?<\/a>\u201c, another one of those tired old think pieces we\u2019ve been seeing for the last eight years that asks \u201cgolly gosh could we coastal elites have played some role in the rise of Trumpism?\u201d like it\u2019s the first time anyone has ever considered that obvious point (the answer is yes, duh, you soft-handed silver spoon-fed ivory tower bubble boy).<\/p>\n<p>One worthwhile paragraph about the media stands out though:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>\u201cOver the last decades we\u2019ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we\u2019re not only a college-dominated profession, we\u2019re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/o\/AtKre\/https:\/\/www.journalofexpertise.org\/articles\/volume1_issue1\/JoE_2018_1_1_Wai_Perina.pdf\"  target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">study<\/a>\u00a0found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">We in the educated class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vLGHYGKcse\" >https:\/\/t.co\/vLGHYGKcse<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nytdavidbrooks\/status\/1686882999437066241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >August 2, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Brooks is not the first to make this observation about the drastic shift in the socioeconomic makeup of news reporters that has taken place from previous generations to now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe class factor in journalism gets overlooked,\u201d journalist Glenn Greenwald <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/7kyqSDTKVY0?t=2224\" >said<\/a> on the Jimmy Dore Show in 2021. \u201cThirty or forty years ago, fifty years ago, journalists really were outsiders. That\u2019s why they all had unions; they made shit money, they came from like working class families. They hated the elite. They hated bankers and politicians. It was kind of like a boss-employee relationship \u2014 they hated them and wanted to throw rocks at them and take them down pegs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I were to list the twenty richest people I\u2019ve ever met in my entire life, I think like seven or eight of them are people I met because they work at The Intercept \u2014 people from like the richest fucking families on the planet,\u201d Greenwald added.<\/p>\n<p>Journalist Matt Taibbi, whose father worked for NBC, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/xojSWHrar9A?t=4370\" >made similar observations<\/a> on the Dark Horse podcast back in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cReporters when I was growing up, they came from a different class of people than they do today,\u201d Taibbi said. \u201cA lot of them were kind of more working class \u2014 their parents were more likely to be plumbers or electricians than they were to be doctors or lawyers. Like this thing where the journalist is an Ivy League grad, that\u2019s a relatively new thing that I think came about in the seventies and eighties with my generation. But reporters just instinctively hated rich people, they hated powerful people. Like if you put up a poster of a politician in a newsroom it was defaced instantaneously, like there were darts on it. Reporters saw it as their job to stick it to the man.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMostly the job is different now,\u201d Taibbi said. \u201cThe fantasy among reporters in the nineties about politicians started to be, I want to be the person that hangs out with the candidate after the speech and has a beer and is sort of close to power. And that\u2019s kind of the model, that\u2019s where we\u2019re at right now. That\u2019s kind of the problem is that basically people in the business want to be behind the rope line with people of influence. And it\u2019s going to be a problem to get us back to that other adversarial posture of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B_EIky0ykrA?version=3&amp;rel=1&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;fs=1&amp;hl=en&amp;autohide=2&amp;wmode=transparent\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This is a major reason behind the freakish sycophancy and empire loyalism we see in the mainstream press. It\u2019s not just the obscenely wealthy owners of the mass media who are protecting their class interests \u2014 it\u2019s the reporters, editors and pundits as well.<\/p>\n<p>These are typically fairly wealthy people from fairly wealthy families, who become more and more wealthy the more their careers are elevated. As insiders of the mainstream press <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.caitlinjohnst.one\/p\/15-reasons-why-mass-media-employees\" >have attested<\/a>, it\u2019s widely understood by employees of the mainstream media that the way to elevate your career is to toe the establishment line and refrain from spotlighting issues that are inconvenient to the powerful.<\/p>\n<p>This identification with the ruling class feeds into the dynamic described by Taibbi in which modern journalists have come to value close proximity to those in power. These are the people they want to be sharing drinks with and going to parties with and invited to the weddings of; the \u201cus vs them\u201d dynamic which used to exist between the press and politicians switched, and now the press see themselves and the politicians they fraternize with as \u201cus\u201d and the general public as \u201cthem\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>There are other factors at play with regard to elite education. The number of journalists with college degrees\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/ACan9#selection-3797.0-3797.18\" >skyrocketed<\/a>\u00a0from 58 percent in 1971 to 92 percent in 2013; if your wealthy parents aren\u2019t paying that off for you then you\u2019ve got crushing student debt that you need to pay off yourself, which you can only do in the field you studied in by making a decent amount of money, which you can only do by acting as a dependable propagandist for the imperial establishment.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9RPKH6BVcoM?version=3&amp;rel=1&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;fs=1&amp;hl=en&amp;autohide=2&amp;wmode=transparent\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Universities themselves tend to play a status quo-serving, conformity-manufacturing role when churning out journalists, as wealth won\u2019t flow into an academic environment that is offensive to the wealthy. Moneyed interests are unlikely to\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/the-biggest-private-donations-to-universities-by-individuals-2019-5#t-13-nike-co-founder-and-billionaire-philip-knight-donated-400-million-to-stanford-university-in-2016-3\" >make large donations<\/a>\u00a0to universities which teach their students that moneyed interests are a plague upon the nation, and they are certainly not going to send their kids there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe whole intellectual culture has a filtering system, starting as a child in school,\u201d Noam Chomsky once <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theanarchistlibrary.org\/library\/eric-french-interview-with-noam-chomsky-direct-participation-in-creativity\" >explained in an interview<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re expected to accept certain beliefs, styles, behavioral patterns and so on. If you don\u2019t accept them, you are called maybe a behavioral problem, or something, and you\u2019re weeded out. Something like that goes on all the way through universities and graduate schools. There is an implicit system of filtering\u2026 which creates a strong tendency to impose conformism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The people who make it through this filtering system are the ones who are elevated to the most influential positions in our civilization. All the most widely amplified voices in our society are the celebrities, journalists, pundits and politicians who\u2019ve proven themselves to be reliable stewards of the matrix of narrative control which keeps the public jacked in to the mainstream worldview.<\/p>\n<p>Is it any wonder, then, that all the sources we\u2019ve been taught to look to for information about our world continually feed us stories which give the impression that the status quo is working fine and this is the only way things can possibly be? Is it any wonder that the mass media support all US wars and cheerlead all imperial agendas?<\/p>\n<p>This is how things were set up to be. Our media act like propagandists for a tyrannical regime because that\u2019s exactly what they are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\">_________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Caitlin-Johnstone.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-236973\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Caitlin-Johnstone.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"56\" height=\"56\" \/><\/a>\u00a0 <em>Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly\u00a0<\/em><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\" ><i>at <\/i><\/a><\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\" >Medium<\/a><\/span>. <em>Contact: <\/em><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a href=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/TRANSCEND\/T%20M%20S\/TO%20POST\/A%20BYLINES\/admin@caitlinjohnstone.com\">admin@caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com.au\/2023\/08\/04\/mainstream-journalists-are-cloistered-ivy-league-educated-trust-fund-kids\/\" >Go to Original \u2013 caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>4 Aug 2023 &#8211; It\u2019s not just the obscenely wealthy owners of the mass media who are protecting their class interests, it\u2019s the reporters&#8211;cloistered Ivy League-educated trust fund kids&#8211;, editors and pundits as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":241020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2375,922,2314,550,2881,1855],"class_list":["post-241019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-alternative-media","tag-bias","tag-corporate-media","tag-corruption","tag-journalistic-ethics","tag-mainstream-media-msm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":241021,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241019\/revisions\/241021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}