Thoughts on Journalism

One day I hope to be a journalist, preferably for a newspaper or news web site. Thus, my thoughts often turn towards this topic. I recently have had a number of post worthy thoughts on journalism, but none of them are long enough to justify a single post, so, if you'll bear with the schizophrenic nature of this paper, I'll slap them up in my usual manner.

I was reading an article by the International Herald Tribune today on recent attacks in Iraq and arrived at what I believe to be a rather unusual revelation. Though the reporters hold nothing back when detailing the deaths of 'the good guys' (those whom the readers are most likely to sympathize with, in this case being the American and Iraqi soldiers) I don't believe I've ever read how many insurgents died in their fights with American and Iraqi forces. I do understand most attacks are carried out through suicide bombings, where it's pretty obvious how many insurgents died, but what about these skirmishes I keep hearing about. Short of surviving insurgents taking the dead with them or injured fighters dying away from the action, shouldn't there be bodies that can be counted? Why do our news sources shy away from this? Do they fear it would make us appear brutal in the case of many dead insurgents or pathetic if there are few enemy deaths?

Before I left for college, my dad asked a reporter who used him as a source for stories on the Outdoors page for his thoughts on journalism and was told that it was the worst paying job this side of working for the Department of Natural Resources. Well, there is one way I figure to get rich through journalism, be a liar. More than a few of those publicly denounced journalists were in the running for a Pulitzer prize, and movies have been made about their lives. As long as money can buy happiness and allow these fallen writers to hide from their failure, they're living pretty well.