IT Hiring:  Media

Media, being just a business, is subject to the same principles as government and business in IT hiring; see preceding entries.

For democracy to work, media (i.e. writers) is supposed to keep government, business, and the general public well-informed. This was considered important enough that a protection for it was put into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers: the First Amendment.

Readers assume that IT writers are qualified to talk about IT so writers talking about IT without being qualified is fraud, particularly when the writers conspicuously don't give their IT education credentials (they'd give them if they had any).

For writers the most important advice has always been "write what you know", including going to college to study the subject you are going to write about, not journalism, English, or other non-IT-related subject.

Media often has doctors and lawyers as writers for medical and legal stories but when it comes to IT stories, the writers have journalism, English, or other non-IT subjects as majors; for example, New York Times cybersecurity writer Nicole Perlroth.

These days Twitter and Facebook have become the primary sources for the media. Writers lazily sit around reading those and writing about them as news. Many stories are images of the tweets and the text is a repeat of the tweets, with some ignorant opinionated commentary added. Before the Web, media was accused of just reporting press releases as news. At least those press releases were more informational than Twitter tweets and Facebook entries.

These no-real-information Twitter tweets and Facebook entries are even more problematic because government often uses them as its preferred media presence, even more than their own websites. Moreover, this intertwines government with media so much that it has Congress asking whether media should be prevented from censoring the government. However, the First Amendment only says government can't censor the people, including media and business; the people have the right to censor the government. See Fake Federal Facebook Fury Finally Finished.

There are magazines devoted to government and business IT, largely funded by government and business (through ads and conferences), that are just cheerleaders and mouthpieces for government and business and would never report a story critical of them.

These days even media is being overrun by supposedly-cheaper foreigners (see IT Hiring: Foreigners), even ones who don't speak English very well — media editing has become so bad it often doesn't matter. A foreign writer should not write for Americans because he cannot know what Americans think and feel about IT issues like censorship, privacy, and foreigners taking American jobs, like IT writing.

Particularly in IT, the media really does need glasses, big ones, but clear ones.

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