From Stacey Patton, journalism professor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacey_Patton
"As a journalism professor, I have spent years watching students struggle to do what should be the most fundamental part of their job: THINK. Not just write. Not just report. THINK.
I watch them attend public meetings, take notes, and file stories that amount to little more than stenography. I ask them why they didn’t challenge an official statement, why they didn’t seek out other perspectives, why they didn’t connect this policy decision to its impact on real people. Their answers are almost always the same: “I didn’t think of that.”
That is what scares me. They aren’t lazy. They aren’t unwilling. They have been conditioned not to think critically, not to question authority, not to challenge narratives, and certainly not to connect the dots between POLICY and POWER.
And make no mistake about it, this didn’t happen by accident. It was engineered BY DESIGN.
For decades, our education system has been steadily chipping away at the very skills necessary for young people to engage meaningfully with the world. Schools have replaced critical thinking with standardized testing, rewarding students for regurgitating information rather than interrogating it. They have spent years sitting in classrooms where the goal is to find the right answer, not ask the right question.
By the time they reach college, they have learned that the safest path is to stay in their lane, follow the formula, and never challenge the system.
And then we throw them into journalism programs and tell them to do the exact opposite.
We ask them to question, investigate, and analyze when everything in their education has trained them to do the opposite.
We ask them to write stories that hold power to account when they don’t even understand how power works.
We tell them to explain policy decisions when they’ve never been taught civics beyond the most basic framework of the three branches of government.
Is it any wonder that when they cover a public meeting, they file stories that are procedural summaries instead of public affairs journalism? They are doing exactly what they’ve been trained to do: observe, document, and move on without asking deeper questions.
This is not an accident. This is a system working exactly as intended.
There was a time when schools taught students how government works, who wields power, and how policy shapes society. There was a time when civic education meant more than just memorizing how a bill becomes a law.
But over the past few decades, civics has been systematically stripped from the curriculum, replaced with subjects that are easier to standardize, test, and control. The result? A generation that doesn’t understand how government functions, doesn’t know how policies are made, and doesn’t have the knowledge to challenge authority.
Because a population that doesn’t understand power can’t question it!!!!
And what better way to ensure that young people never develop the tools to resist oppression, corruption, and exploitation than to deny them the education that would allow them to recognize it?
At the same time, we have built an attention economy designed to train young people to engage with information in the most superficial way possible.
They don’t read deeply. They scroll. They skim. They absorb headlines, soundbites, and memes instead of context, analysis, and history. The news they consume is dictated by algorithms that reinforce what they already believe, ensuring they rarely encounter dissenting views or uncomfortable truths.
Even when they do read news, they engage with it passively. They do not instinctively question whether the facts are being framed in a way that serves power. They do not dig deeper to find what’s missing. They do not ask, “Who benefits from this narrative?”
Because they were never taught to.
Skepticism is the foundation of journalism. It is the instinct that tells a reporter to challenge official statements, verify facts independently, and push back against convenient narratives.
But skepticism is dangerous to a system that thrives on obedience. So it has been systematically erased.
Instead, students are taught to accept authority, trust institutions, and believe that objectivity means treating all sides as equally valid, even when one is demonstrably false. They are taught that questioning too much is “biased,” that calling out injustice too strongly is “activism,” and that exposing corruption too aggressively is “unprofessional.”
By the time they reach a journalism classroom, many have already internalized these lessons. They are afraid to challenge power because they have never been told they’re allowed to.
So they don’t.
A society that wants a truly free press, a truly informed public, and truly independent thinkers educates its young people to be critical, engaged, and fearless. It teaches them history, politics, philosophy, and media literacy. It encourages them to debate, question, and investigate.
A society that wants passivity, obedience, and a press that doesn’t threaten the status quo does the opposite.
It systematically erases civic education, narrows students’ intellectual curiosity, and ensures they consume just enough information to function but not enough to resist.
It turns schools into factories that produce good workers, not critical thinkers.
It turns media into an entertainment industry that delivers engagement, NOT TRUTH.
It turns journalists into stenographers who record what power says, not what it does and why it matters to the people.
And it has worked.
We now have a generation of young journalists who are well-trained in reporting processes but not in critical inquiry. They know how to attend a meeting, take notes, and file a story. But they do not instinctively question the systems they are covering. They do not dig deeper into the policies they are reporting on.
Because they were never meant to.
Deep sigh."
@per_sonne "who benefits?" is the question foremost in my mind when I consume media: "why is this story in front of my eyes, and why now?"
@per_sonne maybe our exhaustion is the objective?
Misinform, overwhelm, obfuscate...it's the usual class warfare, to maintain the status quo. I've seen it over and over in historical documents, at least since the invention of the printing press and the creation of mass media (mid 17th century onwards).
But we mustn't forget that those same media were the reason why many labourers had access to translations of Das Kapital by Karl Marx and a large part of the mobilisation towards the French Revolution happened because of clandestine print leaflets...it goes both ways.