Ignorance Breeds Arrogance

You know at least one arrogant ignoramus, don't you? Doesn't everybody? Of all the millions of kinds of people there must be, the Arrogant Ignoramus is one of those that, if possible, I avoid at all costs. There's no dealing with the Arrogant Ignoramus: he doesn't know how wrong he is, and he doesn't accept correction or instruction. And the more ignorant he is, the more arrogant he is, no?

Well, that's been my observation over the years.

Do you know of any kind of human being who is more cocksure of everything than the newspaper editorialist? (Except bloggers, of course.) I don't.

And I do mean everything. Think back over any given year of your life: how many editorials did you read in the local paper, or a paper with a national readership? They told you what was right, and what was wrong, and what should be done, and what should not be done, on every subject from the economy and taxes to roadwork and asphalt; from medicine and plastic surgery to "global" "warming" and carbon dioxide; and, from recreation and baseball to war and military tactics — no?

Is the editorialist so cocksure about everything — anything — because he is an Arrogant Ignoramus? Could be.

Donald Luskin started the ball rolling on this discussion by running some remarks from a reader, yesterday:

Three days after Bill Keller was named executive editor of the New York Times, the newspaper of record's editorial page started running brief bios of all the people on its Editorial Board, one each day, starting with editor of editors Gail Collins. Economist John Seater at North Carolina State University pointed out to me the remarkable fact that "The Times' editorial writers, to a person, have not been trained in any of the subjects they write about, with the exception of law." Is the newspaper of record actually the newspaper of not knowing what the hell you're talking about?...

Nashville journalist Bill Hobbs agrees, also yesterday:

.... But this isn't just a problem with the NYT editorial board. I'd hazard a guess that 90 percent of reporters write about things they have no training or expertise in - and their news coverage often forms the knowledge base that similarly untrained newspaper editorialists use to write their editorials.

It is a failing of the basic way journalism has been taught for the past several decades. Too much of the courses and lab work for a journalism degree focus on the craft of journalism itself - basic interviewing and writing and editing skills, learning the AP Styleguide rules, learning to compose a story in "inverted pyramid" format, and such.

Too few journalists get a formal education in a subject area that they will then go cover. Most business journalists never took a business course in college. Most journalists who report on the economy didn't study economics. Most reporters who write about the environment have no scientific training. Most reporters who write about healthcare and medicine have no experience or education in the healthcare industry or no medical training. That's why so many news stories offer no insight, merely heat and light. It's why stories about the economy, for example, boil down to a collection of competing quotes from politicians and economists with agendas - and give you the unshakeable feeling the reporter might not understand a single word of that Greenspan quote he just used. It's why so much journalism is formulaic, uninformative and dull....

I recall, as long ago as 1985, one of my English professors lamenting, and condemning, the fact that he and his colleagues were teaching students how to write, though they had nothing to write about — that is, they had no real knowledge from which to write about anything. How many of his colleagues, all across the country, thought the same way? And how many of their students went on to be journalists over the past two decades?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 07/25/03 08:53:37 AM
Categorized as Media & Most Notable.