Arc Tangent

I returned from an awe­some week­end in Mel­bourne on Tues­day after­noon, to find Can­berra absolutely, bit­terly, butt-​freezingly cold. From shop­ping, awe­some food and cof­fee, Win­ter Sound Sys­tem, over a cramped and uncom­fort­able flight of stomach-​churning tur­bu­lence, into the throes of what feels like an icy North­ern win­ter from hell.

Aaaaaaawe­some. (Sar­casm! How very original!)

I called in to work to tell them I was work­ing from home today, owing to hav­ing been exposed to peo­ple who were cough­ing or exhibit­ing flu-​like symp­toms on Sun­day. Bet­ter safe than sorry, right? I feel fine though, so I work mer­rily away.

Lunchtime rolls around, and one of my friends (who was down in Mel­bourne with me) SMSes me to let me know he’s feel­ing awful and head­ing off to the Doc­tor for testing.

Uhohs.

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As I was nod­ding off last night, think­ing about an arti­cle I’d read in the paper ear­lier in the day which irri­tated me — because it wasn’t good jour­nal­ism. The exact arti­cle and its source aren’t rel­e­vant to this dis­cus­sion — lets just take it for granted that in a world of media out­lets like Fox News (“it’s Info­tain­ment!”) there’s a cer­tain ques­tion hov­er­ing over the idea of jour­nal­is­tic integrity.

The sta­tus quo makes it very easy for the media to get away with pub­lish­ing what­ever the hell they want to. Most media out­lets are in the hands of a small num­ber of com­pa­nies; they have vested cor­po­rate inter­ests in being loud, con­tro­ver­sial and highly debated. There is very lim­ited incen­tive — other than altru­ism on behalf of edi­tors and jour­nal­ists — to report fac­tu­ally and honestly.

It hap­pens. Many arti­cles are writ­ten with every inten­tion of telling the truth, as it’s known to the reporter. Jour­nal­ists aren’t all evil bas­tards, and not every report­ing mis­take belies a con­spir­acy. It just doesn’t hap­pen enough, and prov­ably consistently.

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