But in the last 20 years, every journalist confuses journalism (informing people) with activism (changing people). Perhaps because cut&paste from the internet didn't feel fullfilling enough.
This makes reading news unbearable to me.
Anton Chekhov was an activist journalist 160 years ago. This is not at all a novel phenomenon. And news editors who sought to defend the status quo would, of course, be just as biased as activists—they would amplify or suppress narratives according to their ideological allegiances.
The news industry has never been objective and pure. It has always been subjective and biased.
vs.
"It's strange how people seem to think that Good Old Fashioned Journalism was objective"
If journalism isn't completely objective (or even if it can't be 100% objective) doesn't mean journalists should not be trying to be objective.
Code always had bugs - should we give up fixing them?
I am all for journalist activism if it's clearly marked as such. Disguising activism as news is the biggest sin that the modern media have committed and are committing.
One major problem is the total lack of seriousness. The news and journalists don't just have opinions and at time agitate but they tend to not have supporting evidence. They use the lightest and flimsiest evidence and use that to build opinions and agitate. There is no truth seeking, it's as they say, propaganda. At least opinion used to have some reason behind them and they'd lay out their thinking. Now it's more, "take my word, you and I agree on other things, so believe me on this."
My concern with this sentiment is that is glosses over far more nefarious motivations here (which I think are more common than we like to admit).
I have met many many people in the corporate world that are more concerned about "what the rules are" as opposed to applying any sort of ethical mindset. I've seen again and again where people will take advantage of others, throw other people under the bus, and fight to take "what is theirs" (meaning what they want - not actually what makes sense) without any sort of self-reflection. If challenged they gaslight everyone around them, including themselves..
I'm willing to believe that this extends to reporters. I would not be surprised if a large number of "reporters" out there that happily go along with whatever they are told to do in the job (or to keep their job): go after eyeballs rather than report facts and (sometimes) on stuff that matters. Take a look at any sort of news network and you can clearly see that all these news anchors are playing parts in this screwed up version of reporting what's going on. It's bound to extend down to people writing the articles as well.