Imagine a group of people who believe that manatees are destroying civilization.

Even though there is abundant evidence showing that humans endanger manatees and not vice versa, this hypothetical group continues to insist that manatees are a menace.

Imagine further that reporters are assigned to cover this group. But instead of including facts about manatees in their articles that would contradict the claims of this anti-manatee lobby, they don’t.

Instead, they quote someone who hates manatees, quote an environmentalist, and then as media critic Jay Rosen might say, just “leave it there.”

That would be a ridiculous dereliction of journalistic duty.

Last year I quit my well-paying city job to go back to school and work in retail and my mother still hasn’t gotten over it. To her my decisions seem like symptoms of mental illness that plagued my grandmother and great grandmother. It’s hard to explain why I needed to leave the world of business casual clothing and passive aggressive emails to feel sane again.