Originally Posted by
stevenash
This is what's been being taught in all the reputable journalism universities since the 1800's
Who, what, where, when (the 'why' is not part of the reporters job)
Basic reporting 101.
The reporter's job is just to present the story.
Not to offer as to why an incident happened, it's not part of his job.
As to why it happened that's the journalist's job.
A reporter just reports what happened, the why it happened is the journalist's responsibility.
A journalist researches the incident, the reporters only responsibility is to do just one thing, to inform the masses as to what is going on.
A reporter isn't a journalist (usually), a journalist can be both a journalist and a reporter, and usually is.
An editorialist, his job is to offer up opinions as to why an incident occurred based off of facts.
An editorialist's main responsibly is to offer professional opinions off of the facts presented to him from the journalist, the better editorialists do their own fact checking.
The difference between an editorialist and a pontificator is a slippery slope.
Once you cross over the line of presenting an opinion as truth based on bias and what you want to believe without doing any fact checking, that's what is called a pontificator.
Pontification is not a good thing, once you're labeled a pontificator you're usually branded as a pathological liar.
That's where todays journalism made a bad left turn right about the same time today's advanced social media exploded.
I blame today's social media mainly for that.
Don't get me wrong, today's advanced social media a good thing with a few bad things attached to it.
I'm expressing my opinion based off the facts I checked out.
That would still make me an editorialist and not a pontificator.
That's the problem with today's media, too much pontification, which is a fancy word for lying
There's a few too many pontificators here at SBR, but overall the majority of the posters are straight up.