Saturday, January 22, 2005

Mainstream Newspaper Peddles Dope??

If you follow the journalistic stories about suicide fora on the internet, you've undoubtedly noticed that some of the journalists are hypocrites; some of them decry the fora as encouraging suicide while in the same article they provide details of a method of suicide, or their stories are accompanied by photos that appear to romanticise death while the story accuses the fora of trying to make suicide hip and cool. Lately, though, i've wondered if the discrepancy between what these journalists practice and what they preach is due to something other than hypocrisy.

Take, for instance, a rather comical convergence of information that took place on the website of a mainstream newspaper in the U.S. I don't think that the paper really meant to be effectively talking out of both sides of its mouth on that occasion, but occasions like that make me wonder if mainstream detractors of websites that discuss issues and ideas of which the mainstream apparently disapproves are giving any real thought to the subjects they write about, or whether they are exhibiting a verbal equivalent of some knee-jerk reflex.

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