the current climate

I've been to several recent meetings of a political nature. I walked away with a new prospective. I suppose its not really a new prospective, just something that was enhanced by people I ran into. It is also something that poses an interesting question for me.

The public really doesn't trust many, if any at all, American journalists.

This is not something new to me, but something I suppose I had pushed out of my mind slightly.

One claim is the amount of bias and propaganda. The people I listened to say they miss the objectivity of a newscast from yesteryear. Today has too much political leaning for anything to be considered free of bias. Some networks are even known for their leaning, even though I will not name names. Some of that has been explained by the nature of journalism as a business.

It would also seem, from their viewpoint that many reporters are shying away from being hard-hitting. Many of them, for whatever reason, are not doing big investigative pieces. Many of them are being pushed away from those. As a tiny amount of insight, that could be coming from the upper level. It isn't necessarily about what story sells the most ( although I'm sure sometimes that is the case). It may be that its about money in the sense of salary. Many newspapers don't have time, money or people to expend toward investigative pieces. Ergo, a lot of press release, fed from mouth of political agenda person, gets put out as news.

I would, as some other people, like to see hunger for facts and fact-checking. Many people argue that has gone away.

Another argument was what gets coverage by the media. This is something I've written about before. It seems as though the level of newsworthiness has changed from what it used to be. Rallies in Springfield don't get coverage, but other things like Tiger Woods do. It doesn't seem as though many stories about the wars of Irag and Afghanistan have been reported upon recently, either.

So, with all this criticism, one question remains for me. Since I love journalism and want to make it my career, how do I change this? What can I do to regain the public's trust, and become all the things that I strive for?