James Hamblin

[Commentary] Interrogating the meaning of “the media” has become more important in recent months, as no American president has tried so aggressively to discredit all journalists. This sort of wholesale antagonism can only occur in a world that is drastically oversimplified into binaries. If you’ve read this far, you probably don’t “hate the media” or “love the media,” but see it as the complex professional-commercial-personal-political ecosystem that it is.

Making sweeping claims about “the media” jumbles up journalists with infotainment and partisan pundits and advocates. Many of us see the absurdity in that type of overgeneralization, and yet we contribute to it, with every mention of “the media” as if it were some monolithic entity. That sort of usage enables the painting of this monolithic entity as either corrupt or not, trustworthy or not. It further jeopardizes what little trust remains in the profession that exists only to convey truth. The profession that grows more necessary by the day.