From the newsroom:News media not conspiracy riddled

Tuesday marked my first day of class at Orange Coast College.

I can’t believe it’s been six years since I began teaching an introduction to journalism class there, and I’ve met a number of great young students along the way. Some of the more talented ones we’ve even hired.

What I enjoy is, every semester I get to meet a crop of new faces who do their best not to snore through my stories and lectures.

Usually, it’s a lot of fun for me to teach these kids about this career I love so much.

Usually.

There was the one semester I faced an unusual battle. A number of students entered with preconceived notions of the press and the conspiracies they believed we in the media all concocted.

One particular student insisted, among other things, that reporters pay money for stories regularly and the big bosses at major media organizations like CNN regularly tell reporters what they can and cannot report.

And interestingly, these students didn’t believe CNN was too liberal. On the contrary, they believed CNN was too right wing. That it was towing the Bush administration line in Iraq and not properly reporting what they believed were the atrocities of the war.

When I told the student she was simply wrong, mainstream reporters don’t pay for stories, CNN bosses, or Fox News bosses or newspaper bosses don’t order reporters to take a particular slant, she argued with me.

Finally, I asked her, “Have you ever been in a newsroom?”

Of course, she had not.

So that brings me to my main point.

I was scanning through the Daily Pilot website after two weeks of vacation and ran across a particularly mean-spirited back and forth taking place on the reader comments for a story titled, “South of the border etiquette.”

There were 85 comments, mostly about illegal immigration, on a story that actually had nothing to do with that topic.

And one of the comments from a reader named Andrew Dorian reminded me of that OCC student. Dorian was responding to another reader who cited a Los Angeles Times article on illegal immigration.

“Note to ‘you must be kidding’ — the LA times is not a paper to reference for balanced views on illegal immigration since they are a pro-illegal institution,” Dorian wrote.

Now as most people know, the Los Angeles Times is the Daily Pilot’s sister paper, also owned by the same parent company, Tribune.

And because they are our big, big sister, they don’t need someone like me defending them, and I won’t try.

But I’d like to ask Dorian, and all the others who accuse the Times and the rest of the media of such silly conspiracies, the same question I asked that student at OCC.

Have you ever been inside a newsroom? And more specifically, have you ever been inside the newsroom at the Times or even the Daily Pilot?

Because I don’t know Dorian, I don’t know the answer. But I suspect if he had, he’d find the idea that the Times, or any other mainstream newspaper is a “pro-illegal” institution about as laughable as I do.

Yes, I’m sure there are people on the Times staff, and even the Daily Pilot staff, who are sympathetic to the plight of immigrants, illegal or otherwise. But at the end of the day, journalists have an ethical and professional obligation to tell the whole story, warts and all. And for the most part, we do just that, day in and day out.

So I’d like to extend an invitation to Dorian, a frequent blog critic of the Daily Pilot also, to come pay us a visit. I’d be happy to show him around.

But I think he’d be disappointed. Because what he would see is a whole lot of hard-working, dedicated young professionals who are interested in telling the stories of this community both good and bad.

He’d see editors who take great pains to make sure stories are balanced and fair, reporters and photographers who work long hours making sure they get the story right.

I hate to break this to Dorian and the rest of you conspiracy buffs, but what you won’t see, in this newsroom or any other, is a bunch of people sitting around figuring out ways to conspire against the government or the Minutemen, or big business or to push our “pro-illegal” agenda.

I know that doesn’t sound as sexy as accusing of us treason and other assorted crimes against the state, but I assure you, much of the drama in the newsroom is centered more around what is on the cafeteria lunch menu.

I know, just like that college student from a few years back, I probably am not going to convince those who see conspiracies in all we do, but the teacher in me still wants to try.

Our critics are always accusing of us not getting our facts straight. They should do the same.