It occurred to me just now that when your friends post requests for you to vote for someone they know for some random award or contest it chips away at your integrity to follow through.

Don’t get me wrong, I posted a request just a couple of weeks ago for my friend’s daughter in a radio contest. In my mind I thought if they wanted to people could peruse all of the entrants and could choose H’s video. Or just save time and pick hers to be nice, which is what (as if anyone did) most people would do.

You see it all the time on twitter and facebook. Just now someone put out a request for his friends to vote for his cousin to get Teacher of the Year somewhere. I barely know him, I don’t know her so my vote is bogus, right? Does the fact that he has bunches of loyal friends voting make her, in fact, Teacher of the Year worthy? Maybe she IS the best teacher on the planet, but how do I know?

Sometimes we put out or respond to the requests thinking we’re doing a good thing to help someone, but isn’t it cheating? Does everything have to be a popularity contest dependent on how many friends and friends of friends you have?

Fine, it’s a minor thing (unless you’re the other guy in the contest) but I can feel it’s chipping away at our collective integrity under the guise of social media friendship.

This comment slid past my twitter stream and caught my attention:

Journalism schools should not be teaching students how to get a job. They should be teaching them to tell stories.

Wha-what?

Now I don’t want to get into a pissing match with this particular dude. He gets particularly touchy about his newspaper background. So I respond politely with:

I think stories means made-up. Maybe they should teach them to state the facts in an interesting way.

To which he replies:

That’s your bias. Stories can also be truthful and accurate. A good journalist is a storyteller.

So I look it up.

sto⋅ry

–noun
1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.
2. a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel.

Fine, technically a story can be truth or fiction. I still think the word story implies fiction and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

But after the steady declining of journalistic integrity and the news being taken over by businessmen, where are the real journalists? Should so-called journalists be telling stories?

I want real news back. I want straight facts, very little educated guessing and no fireworks and glitter. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite making shit up? Huntley or Brinkley taking sides on an issue? Or any of them spending hours gossiping about the private lives of reality show attention whores? I DON’T THINK SO!

And I don’t want to know if they ever did. I want to remember trusting the guy in the box. We need more guys in the box to trust. We need more men and women with integrity to go out and find the important news and give it to us straight with no frills, no filling and no corporate agenda.

Not tell stories.

I can get stories everywhere else.

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And I say guys in the box, because I think newspapers are dead. Yesterday’s paper can’t compete with 24 hour news channels and the Internet. I realize newspapers can go more in-depth with a subject than the local news can, but they don’t stand a chance. We’re so disenchanted with ALL journalists that we’re leery of more than the quick facts. The more I read, the more I wonder how much is fudged. I have friends in the news business and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you’re owned by the stockholders. I don’t trust you anymore.