To Many Who Would Be My Future Employer

To My Future Employers:

Only under special circumstances (the possibility of which I unfortunately have to ponder) will I consider working for a surprising number of journalism, PR, and advertising companies in the United States today. And even then I might choose a cardboard box under a bridge over a little cubicle in the corner of the media behemoths currently running amok in the world.

That said, let me articulate my expectations. I am not merely anticipating that the current orgy of dehumanizing media, ownership concentration, and widespread corruption continue unabated. I am banking on it. I expect the heartless corporations to continue the mass production of unscrupulous corporate-government cheerleading and social apathy.

There was a famous study in social psychology, if you're educated you might have heard of it, called Obedience to Authority (Stanley Milgram), where unwitting subjects are given orders to shock actors posing as other test subjects. The study found that most people were more than willing to shock other people as part of the mock experiment to the point of excruciating pain and loss of consciousness simply because they had been told to do so by an authority figure. The implications were profound and more than a little terrifying. One of the study's authors speculated that one of the major bureaucrats behind the institutional enablement of the holocaust wasn't some sadistic racist intent on genocide, but just an uninspired bureaucrat following orders.

I have no formal training in social psychology, so I don't know the merits of the study, but regardless I want to suggest that the sins of contemporary media are not the product of malicious intent to harm other people and the world in which they live, but rather people just trying to get by with as little fuss and as much money and comfort as possible. Media outlets have ethical principles, but many are self-serving enough to justify actions and trends that upon closer scrutiny raise questions about the basic nature of contemporary media. And if their actions get questioned too much many will spout lip service to principles and ethics as necessary to continue on as before. Many of history's worst atrocities have been met by the horrified with ethical arguments. I am certainly not trying to equate contemporary media trends with such, but too many times I see a similar principle play itself out, and I want absolutely no part of it.

I know there are people who see through the mainstream media, who are anxious for an innovative and viable alternative, and I plan on repeated failures in attempting to provide it for them. To have even the slightest chance of succeeding, I need the mainstream media to stay exactly as it is now, perhaps getting ethically worse over time so people are so disaffected that they will more actively seek out alternatives like the ones I dream of helping to provide.

So, to many future employers I say: continue on, lie, cheat, bury important stories, pass off advertisements and government propaganda as news, be as rapacious as possible and think not a fig for this academic curiosity called ethics. Please ignore and insult your audience as you are now. Please let your facade of heart-warming mush atrophy so enough people see your true nature that those of us who see through you may have a more compelling opportunity to rebuild the awe-inspiring yet mistreated calling that is American Journalism.