Journalism is changing. The state of "mainstream" journalism in print media, TV, and radio is declining. There is a new journalism cropping up online which is a mixed bag. Some of it is very good while others are propaganda channels pumping garbage into the media stream. Some online media sources are getting more views per day than the highest rated cable channels.
Every generation has made mistakes with educating their young and somehow we've always managed to muddle through. Maybe someday we will make a critical mistake that blows up everything, but claiming the youth are all screwed up has been going on for many generations. The people saying it now had it said about them when they were young.
A human's brain isn't fully mature until about age 25. As a result kids do stupid things and have done so as long as humans have been around.
I saw something in the last couple of days from someone who is there in New York and has some connection to Columbia. There are two groups of protestors. The students do have an encampment in the cloistered part of campus that only students and staff normally go. They are making too much noise, but that's about the peak problem with their protest.
Columbia also has a gate to New York proper which off campus students use to get to school. That gate has attracted a large number of non-students who are camping out around the gate and are the most belligerent. The incident the other day in which a Hasidic Jewish student was verbally attacked happened when the student was trying to get on campus at that gate. The attacker was a non-student.
Columbia is going to online classes because their off campus students are saying they don't feel safe running the gauntlet of non-student protesters at the gate.
At least some of these non-students might be "professional" agitators who are trying to amp up the protests and turn it into a serious problem for the election. There are some people who want a repeat of 1968 because that helped Nixon get elected. In that game the students are just patsies.
Most of the media coverage is at that gate too. Even if there aren't any professional agitators trying to stir up trouble, there is every crazy in the New York area who wants to be on TV there causing whatever trouble they can to get attention to themselves.
The media who wants there to be juicy stories that get people to tune in are also amping up any conflict to get attention to their outlets. I have seen a few professors at different schools talk about the protests. Some campuses have no protests at all, but the ones that do the number of protestors who are students are a small percentage of the actual student body. Where possible a lot of locals who are not students are bulking up the numbers. Whether the locals are just well meaning people or include some people there to cause trouble, I don't know, but this is not just students protesting. At best only half the protesters are students.
The bulk of students at these schools are just trying to do what students normally do: get to class, study, hang out with some friends, prepare for their summer internship, etc.
The protests over Israel/Palestine are tiny compared to the Vietnam War protests. Which makes sense. Most people aren't going to get worked up about something unless they have a dog in the fight. During Vietnam the men on college campuses were facing the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam. They could get deferments, but they still faced the risk of going when they got out of college. The women were seeing their boyfriends, husbands, brothers, and friends at risk of going to war.
The situation right now has no risk at all for Americans. It's an ideological protest which is only going to draw ideologues. The rest of the students have other, more pressing things on their minds. The media is hyping this because it help their ratings.
www.propublica.org
qz.com
www.screamsbeforesilence.com
