The Proud Degradation Of Journalistic Standards
Universities are in a panic to reflect "diversity" (except when it comes to diversity of political thought). So, if you have the correct (read: not white) skin color, you might be able to get the administration to do backflips for you -- and never mind whether you're actually worthy of hiring by any sort of institution of higher learning.
This is especially true if you are a celebrity of sub-par value (in terms of what you have to teach).
That seems to be what's happened at UNC Chapel Hill's Hussman School of Journalism, which has "announced a heralded addition to their faculty. Nikole Hannah-Jones has agreed to accept a Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism in July," reports Jay Schalin at James Martin Center.
The headline of the piece rightly asks:
School of Journalism--or Ministry of Propaganda?
More from Schalin on The 1619 Project's Jones:
According to a press release issued by the school, Hannah-Jones is a "Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" recipient who covers civil rights and racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine and was just elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences."And that just begins her list of "achievements." The press release continues:
Among her national honors are the National Association of Black Journalists' Journalist of the Year award in 2015; Peabody and Polk Awards for radio reporting in 2016; the Hillman Prize for magazine reporting and the National Magazine Award in 2017 and again in 2020...The Society of American Historians welcomed the esteemed journalist as a Fellow in 2020. She was inducted to the NC Media & Journalism Hall of Fame April 9, 2021.
Great Mencken's Ghost! Has there ever been a pundit so supremely qualified to teach journalism as Hannah-Jones? Such an acclaimed hiring can mean a lot to a university department or school. Its national reputation may rise--possibly influencing its national ranking. And her position is fully funded by the Knight Foundation--with the possibility that her presence will attract other donations in the future.
Fred Worthy, the chairman of the school's foundation board, said that "a MacArthur Genius with a Pulitzer Prize who will share her perspective and skills with our students is exactly the kind of journalistic leader we believe will build the school for tomorrow."
But there is another perspective, one that almost seems to belong to another world than the one where academia resides. From this perspective, UNC's hiring Hannah-Jones signals a degradation of journalistic standards, from one in which ethics and truth are prized to one in which a writer's work is judged according to whether it serves a preferred political agenda.
For she has been exposed as somebody whose work is less journalism than an outpouring of emotions. The crown jewel of her career--leading a rewriting of the nation's history called "The 1619 Project"--has been attacked and ridiculed by historians of all stripes and persuasions as unfactual and biased.
For instance, she claimed that "one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery" as British anti-slavery sentiment grew. There is almost no hint of that in factual history. Certainly some Southern founding fathers wished to preserve slavery--that's how we got the Three-fifths Compromise--but that came later, after we were already a free nation, during the discussion about the details of the new Constitution.
Many celebrated experts chimed in against Hannah-Jones's take on our Founding. Historian Sean Wilentz was quoted in an article written by Adam Serwer of The Atlantic as saying:
To teach children that the American Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery would be giving a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the American Revolution was all about but what America stood for and has stood for since the Founding.
Serwer added that "the Revolution was kindled in New England, where prewar anti-slavery sentiment was strongest."
...Gordon Wood, an emeritus history professor at Brown University, said in an interview with Real Clear Media that the Project's only classroom utility is "as a way of showing how history can be distorted and perverted."
Schalin sums up:
There are indeed two differing worlds in American intellectual life today: one a world built upon impressions, reputation, and political expedience, and the other a world that rewards truth-seeking and integrity.In the world of impressions, Hannah-Jones is one of America's pre-eminent public intellectuals, and UNC-Chapel Hill has acquired one of journalism's leading lights. Students (and their parents) looking for a top-notch journalism program may be impressed by UNC-Chapel Hill's Hussman School, with its award-winning new professor.
But from the other perspective, the world of seeking truth and behaving with integrity, Hannah-Jones has been thoroughly discredited and all of her awards and achievements are mere illusion. Her hiring should be a signal to students seriously interested in journalism and their parents to cross Chapel Hill off their list.
I think part of the problem is that journalism students are taught to think of themselves a crusaders (or whatever equivalent word is now acceptable to the SJWs). Modern journalists no longer come to the table as impartial reporters of fact and no longer want to do so.
There's some question if journalists ever were impartial reporters of fact. The newspapers of the late 1800s and early 1900s were famous for taking sides on issues. Edward R. Murrow famously said, "Some stories don't have two sides." Woodward and Bernstein brought down a president and gained lasting fame for doing so. Weege made sure his photos of crime scenes were lurid and splashy. Circulation (eyes captured) has always overridden journalism as the prime consideration in media reporting.
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A few years ago, I read a biography of Cotton Mather. New England in the late 1600s was already a hotbed of separatist sentiment - much like South Carolina in the 1860s. Resentment of distant British rule and insistence on local autonomy were characteristics of the colonial politics in that region at that time. Colonist even forcibly ejected the colonial governor sent from England. Cotton's father, Increase Mather, was heavily involved in New England colonial politics.
The English Civil War (1642-1651), the Commonwealth (1649-1660) and the Restoration (1660) were still sore spots in English politics, and the New England colonists were not immune to the hostility generated by that little dust-up. Even by 1776, anti-monarchist sentiment was still running strong in New England.
The 1619 Project was an attempt to project American slavery as the country's original sin, without regard to the rest of the world at the time. Britain did not abolish slavery until 1833 (except in India) and nearly went bankrupt compensating slave owners at the time. France waited until 1848 to abolish slavery but turned a blind eye to the continuation of slavery in its Caribbean colonies where sugar cane required back-breaking labor to harvest and process.
Northern US states had abolished slavery by 1804 without compensation to slave owners - not an issue, since most slaves in the North functioned as household or shop help and were few in number even then. Slaves were not used in place of employees in factories since recent immigrants were cheaper overall.
On the other hand, slavery was the economic basis of an agricultural South, so any abolition of slavery without compensation was potentially going to bankrupt many powerful Southern slave owners who relied on their slaves as not only inexpensive labor, but on the market value of those slaves as a hedge against a bad crop and potential financial ruin.
Conan the Grammarian at May 4, 2021 7:17 AM
Conan, about that last paragraph:
The juvenile writer of history, Joy Hakim, turned 90 this year. In the 1990s, she wrote the A History of U.S. series.
www.joyhakim.com
From a 2003 interview in edweek dot org:
Q. What prompted you to start writing the History of US series?
A. I had raised three kids, and I was very disturbed by their books. They weren’t grammatically incorrect, but it was just terrible writing.
We have a reading crisis in our country, for heaven’s sake—why would we give kids books that are so dull, nobody wants to read them? It just doesn’t make sense. History should be every child’s favorite subject. Our most passionate discussions as adults are over politics. Well, the politics of the past is just as interesting, and it’s the same issues. And if you get kids into those issues, they’ll argue about it.
The core of the American story is slavery. How could we have had slavery in the “land of the free?” Most books just make it very dumb: “Slavery was evil, period.” Well, it’s more than that. The real question is, why do good people sometimes do bad things? The people in the South were not all bad people. But they were trapped in a system. And you have to ask yourself, what would you do if you were a very wealthy slave owner, and giving up your slaves would make you poor? I ask kids that question, and suddenly, [they] think, “Wow—I wouldn’t want to be poor.” So there are all sorts of things to think about that, traditionally, the history books haven’t given you...
(snip)
Lenona at May 4, 2021 8:58 AM
Btw, despite that 1833 date, weren't British aristocrats, at least, sympathetic to American slaveholders during the Civil War, IIRC?
Lenona at May 4, 2021 9:06 AM
Some might have been, but cotton is what held their interest more than slaves. The British mills needed cotton.
British textile mills depended heavily upon a steady and inexpensive supply of cotton, which the American South provided. Absent the South's commoditization of cotton, the bulk of cotton was supplied by small farmers who planted cotton among their other crops, spun it, and sold it to traveling buyers who made the rounds buying cotton. It was then bundled and sold to wholesalers who shipped it to Britain. That was a tedious, expensive, and unreliable process. The American South, on the other hand, grew cotton as a commodity and offered a steady supply of cotton at low prices, a godsend to the ravenous textile mills of the British midlands.
Cotton, by the 18th century, was an extremely valuable commodity. The British textile mills bought cotton and sold garments made from it worldwide. Fortunes were made and lost on cotton.
Book of Interest on the Subject: Empire of Cotton
Conan the Grammarian at May 4, 2021 10:20 AM
Let me clarify. The British mills sold bolts of cloth worldwide, not so much garments.
Conan the Grammarian at May 4, 2021 10:22 AM
"I think part of the problem is that journalism students are taught to think of themselves a(s) crusaders..." - Conan
I don't think any students are actually taught this in school. I think it's something they come to realize on their own. When I was a reporter for a newsradio station, I had my own agenda. I tried to refrain from referring to local politicians as Republican or Democrat. I mean, do we need to label their thought process? Can't they just be allowed to feel a certain way about issues without it being pre-determined by their party affiliation? Today, too many people think, "That Democrat/Republican is wrong" only because they think it goes against their political philosophy. But my News Director got frustrated by my attempts to undermine public perceptions and I was forced to start including the designations in the stories I wrote.
Fayd at May 4, 2021 12:26 PM
@Lenona:
The British Crown was sympathetic to the South, but that sympathy does not appear to have been deep or strong even in the upper classes.
By 1863, southern ports were largely in Union hands, and the rest were blockaded. When Union forces captured large stockpiles of cotton, it was sold -usually to brokers for English mills. Further, cotton farming expanded in the British colonies of Egypt and India. Thus, there were no good reasons economically to intervene militarily and attempt to break the Union blockade. Moreover, at that time the British Navy consisted of wooden hulled ships and the Union naval forces in southern ports usually included some ironclad monitors, which would likely have severely damaged or sunk any wooden hauled ships sent to re-capture the southern ports. This would have made military intervention risky and expensive. Finally, much of southern plantation agriculture was financed by factoring - loans against future crop sales. The plantation class was largely a debtor class. Ron Chernow’s biography Washington: A Life, contains an excellent description of that system. However, by 1863 the British Banks’ Accounts Receivable were either paid or written off, and there was no interest aiding an American south that was being devastated by war - throwing good money after bad.
When the facts are examined, the idea that the British Empire ever seriously considered intervening on the side of the south looks more like another branch of the Lost Cause mythology.
Wfjag at May 4, 2021 12:57 PM
This is a fantastic comment stack
Crid at May 4, 2021 3:45 PM
The Brits still had slaves in their colonies at the time of the Revolution... even up until Queen Victoria's time...
NicoleK at May 5, 2021 12:03 PM
The American Girl doll books are OK. Not the greatest writing, but not the worst, and they introduce kids to different parts of history.
I pretty much learn history that way... I'll read Philippa Gregory to get into it, and then Allison Weir to find out what was true.
My kids' favorite Princess story I tell is the War of the Roses through the Tudors. I mean, a very brief version obviously, but I begin with "Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Princess named Margaret of Anjou..." and go from there.
I mean if you like stories about Princesses history has a lot of good ones.
NicoleK at May 5, 2021 12:06 PM
The bad news is that even if you hate stories about princesses, it seems like there are more every day. (Hi Kam!)
Crid at May 5, 2021 3:21 PM
Wow! Yes. I get it.
It's mobbing. Indirect mob aggression. Bullying.
Academics excel at it, more than anything. Or anyone. Genderless bitchiness.
To paraphrase Janice Harper, Ph.D. the art of bullying, or mobbing is a "gentle genocide".
As dependent on the easily mislead, as those willing to gaslight.
Aldi at May 5, 2021 8:03 PM
Late to the party, but English aristocrats were put off by Southern emissaries because they so arrogantly portrayed the slaveholding system as beneficial to all, right after the Brits had outlawed it in their other colonies. Also, they had another source of cotton in India. I was just at a museum (in Charleston SC) that showed a graph of English cotton imports. They dropped to virtually zero before the Civil War began, with cotton from India taking up all the drop, and growing steadily from that point onward. The reunited USA never recovered the English market.
wambut at May 8, 2021 11:47 AM
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