Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Which is to say, no, good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Confirmation bias is universal, however, so it takes a lot of work to learn to bypass it.
[…] good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Hm, perhaps my usage of “self-evident” isn’t super accurate here — I agree that one needs to be taught/be in possession of the knowledge for how to determine if a sample of journalism is “good”. What I mean to say is that I think articles contain within themselves all that is required to determine if are examples of good or bad journalism — all that’s required is for someone to know what to look for in the article to determine that for themself.
Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.
Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.
Which is to say, no, good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.
Confirmation bias is universal, however, so it takes a lot of work to learn to bypass it.
I agree.
Hm, perhaps my usage of “self-evident” isn’t super accurate here — I agree that one needs to be taught/be in possession of the knowledge for how to determine if a sample of journalism is “good”. What I mean to say is that I think articles contain within themselves all that is required to determine if are examples of good or bad journalism — all that’s required is for someone to know what to look for in the article to determine that for themself.
I agree.