Journalism Midterm Essay

Critical Lens Essay

            Jimmy Breslin once said “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers”. This quote accurately reflects the motivation for many journalists in the world, because what it essentially means is that journalists write to inform the public about what’s going on in the world, and more specifically, what’s wrong in the world. This line of thinking is what the basis is of muckraking, investigative journalism, and other articles meant to inform. Examples of each of these could be Lewis Sinclair, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and even John Steward to an extent. Anger over some sort of dysfunction within society led these people to write, and what they wrote led people to realize something, and society changed because of it.

            In the beginning of the 20^th century, working conditions for many factory workers was atrocious. Bad lighting, dangerous machines, a noxious atmosphere, and low pay all contributed to a period of time in our nations history where the average factory worker was abused. One journalist, Lewis Sinclair, noticed this, and got so angry that he wrote about it. The Jungle was the book he wrote, and it really opened America’s eyes to the treatment some people were receiving for a small amount of money. His rage at the way things were led Americans to take a stand against the owners of the factories and other big businessmen, heralding in an era of unions and labor rights activism. Lewis Sinclair saw something wrong, got angry, and told everyone about it. That was his purpose; to tell the American public a story it needed to hear and he did out of pure rage.

            President Nixon hired men to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Convention in order to help his reelection campaign. Today, most Americans know the story of Watergate, but when it first happened, it was initially disregarded. When the truth began to come out, or not come out rather (seeing as Nixon refused to give up the evidence linking him to the crime) two writers wrote articles that alerted America to the great wrongs of their president. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodard told the story of Nixon and his criminal actions, and they did it because they saw that the president broke the law. They were outraged, and that outrage spread to the public because people read their articles and took notice. From a moral standpoint you could say that when Nixon resigned, he did it out of disgrace for his actions. From a realistic standpoint, you can say that he resigned because two angry men exposed him for who he was and what he did.

            John Steward runs an entertainment show, but it’s part of the media and to a certain extent, he is a journalist. He may exaggerate the facts for comedy, but people hear what he says, and it affects the way those people think. During the recent presidential election John Steward ran a number of shows where he made fun of the Republican candidate Mitt Romney. John Steward was angry with some of the things that Romney said and did, and so he made fun of him publicly. People might not take John Steward seriously all the time, but there is an undercurrent of fact to what he says, and I personally learned some true things about Mitt Romney from watching the Daily Show. His comedy informed the public about some of the things Romney said, for examples “binders full of women” was a well-known one. I didn’t watch the debate where Mitt Romney said that, but when it was reported to me by John Steward, that’s when I got mad. Other Americans got mad too, and Mitt Romney lost because of it. Mitt Romney lost the presidential election because he angered journalists and those journalists told the public about every single thing that Romney did wrong, and that’s an important reason he lost.

            Angry people influence other people, and angry journalists influence the public. Journalists write because they’re angry, more specifically because they want things to change or they want their opinion expressed and accepted. Anger motivates people this way, and it influences society to act as well, and to a certain extent that’s the point of journalism: to tell a story of a wrong, and hope the public rights it.