IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: What’s a Journalism?

“I’m a journalism!” hapless Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum says in one of my favorite memes — a favorite because sometimes it takes a meek moron’s malapropism to express what we were all thinking.

Poor Ralph. He never quite understands what’s going on around him, but he always wants to help. Then there are Washington’s actual journalists — I’ve called them many other names over the years, none of them nice — who surely understand much but seem only to push partisan narratives.

That’s how Ralph’s “I’m helping!” while standing uselessly around became “I’m a journalism!” Some versions of the meme show Ralph with a finger jammed up his nose, as if for emphasis.

The everyday reporter brings biases — and increasingly, a near-total ignorance of anything that might add essential context. My concern today isn’t with them because they’re just following the lead of media-types much higher up the food chain.

So today, let’s take a look at three examples: the publisher, the talking head, and the fact-checker.

Much more at the link.