Last week, the University of California at Berkeley’s College Republican group was berated and assaulted by a group of liberal activists for the apparent crime of daring to have a different opinion than them. Now, can you guess who UC Berkeley has pegged to be their commencement speaker?
That’s right! It’s Jorge Ramos.
To be more specific, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism announced on Monday that Ramos was chosen to be their speaker next year. As you can see in the tweet below, the school calls Ramos an “extraordinary journalist” and tosses in the hashtags ‘diversity’ and ‘muckraker’ for good measure.
For those who don’t know, ‘muckrake’ is an old-timey term that is defined by Websters as: “To search out and publicly expose real or apparent misconduct of a prominent individual or business.”
So there you have it. UC Berkeley’s own Graduate School of Journalism apparently thinks Jorge Ramos is a journalist who is known for his hard-hitting, investigative journalism that goes after figures in both parties.
This is almost appalling when you consider it was Ramos himself who has openly called for journalists to drop their impartiality this election cycle, and said that “neutrality is not always an option” when it comes to covering people like Republican nominee Donald Trump.
So instead of being called out and ostracized from the journalistic world for calling on reporters and journalists to stop following the basic tenant of journalism, he's instead being rewarded with a commencement speaking gig to advise aspiring journalists.
To be clear, I do wish all the graduating students well and that they are able to find good jobs doing what they love. What I don’t want, however, is for them to think the ideas of people like Jorge Ramos are what is acceptable in journalism today.
Neutrality isn’t something that journalists should turn on and off whenever it suits them. It is a guiding principle that should be Rule No. 1 on any journalist’s mind.
So to those students who will have to listen to Ramos, I say this: Jorge Ramos is not someone whom you should emulate on your path to journalism. Jorge Ramos is the problem in journalism.
If you’ve had enough of Jorge Ramos, join our Ramos Must Go campaign today!