{"id":84,"date":"2009-07-13T11:42:42","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T11:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/journalistic-narcissism-unethical-or-merely-inevitable.html"},"modified":"2009-07-13T11:42:42","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T11:42:42","slug":"journalistic-narcissism-unethical-or-merely-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/journalistic-narcissism-unethical-or-merely-inevitable.html","title":{"rendered":"Journalistic Narcissism: Unethical or Merely Inevitable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Nar-cis-sism<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>??<\/span>[nahr<\/b>-suh<\/i>-siz-em]  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

-noun<\/span>
1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive
\nself-love; vanity.<\/span><\/span>
2. Psychoanalysis<\/span><\/i>. erotic gratification derived from
\nadmiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition
\nat the infantile level of personality development.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it unethical for the news to become about personality
\nover perspicuity, or simply inevitable?<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll admit I search the Google Hot Trends<\/a> frequently in my quest to find fresh topics for this blog. When narcissism<\/a> came up today, I said, “Hey, wait a sec, hold on there, I didn’t do an
\n‘ego search<\/a>‘” (ie, Googling my own name). Instead, what I did<\/span> find when I researched why
\nthe term was trending high was a blog post on Buzz Machine<\/a> (actually quoting Andrew Sullivan at the The Atlantic.com’ Daily Dish<\/a>) talking about how journalism has become too much about the journalists.<\/span><\/p>\n

No kidding! <\/span>I
\nthink Jon Stewart’s<\/a> been pointing that out for quite some time now. And one has only to watch the
\n24-hour cable news networks or sign up for some of these talking heads’ tweets<\/a> to see they enjoy the fame
\nat least as much as they feel the gravity of the work they do. Even my beloved local news anchor Pat Kiernan is a twittering fiend<\/a> who seems to adore the instant feedback he gets. And when it comes to
\nprint journalists, well, those guys are having a tough enough time that they have<\/i> to be self-aggrandizing, just to stay
\nemployed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is that wrong? Are they merely being human, or are these
\njournalists falling down on the job? Is Edward R. Murrow<\/a> rolling in his grave, or did he, too, enjoy a bit of the limelight?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or–wait–maybe today’s hot trend is really about Sarah Palin?<\/span><\/span> I hear some people are claiming<\/a> she’s got narcissistic personality disorder. Check out the symptoms<\/a> and see if you agree. Who’s throwing out these charges, by the way… could it be some of those same narcissistic newscasters?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nar-cis-sism??[nahr-suh-siz-em]  -noun1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development. Is it unethical for the news to become about personality over perspicuity, or simply inevitable? I’ll admit I search the Google Hot Trends frequently in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,28,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-media-ethics","category-political-ethics"],"yoast_head":"\nJournalistic Narcissism: Unethical or Merely Inevitable? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/journalistic-narcissism-unethical-or-merely-inevitable.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Journalistic Narcissism: Unethical or Merely Inevitable? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nar-cis-sism??[nahr-suh-siz-em]  -noun1. inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.2. Psychoanalysis. erotic gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}