Would that that were true. In real life, everyone wants their own agenda to be validated.We need the truth. Not an agenda.
True. That’s what we need, but we can never take for granted that we are getting it.The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.People settle ideas in their minds, and convince themselves that they are worthy of being listened to - and followed. Then they do their best to snow everyone else into believing - and following them.The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires.
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
. . . and that used to be much more widely understood than it now is. Before the founding of the wire services after the 1844 demonstration of the telegraph, all newspapers were taken to be the opinions of their printers. And if you lived where there were multiple newspapers available, you bought the one whose printer’s opinions were congenial/interesting. Much as we choose to, or not to, listen to particular talk radio shows.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)Since the AP “wire” and other wire services constitute virtual meetings of “people of the same trade” (journalism), it is naive for anyone to assume that journalists do not conspire against the public. In fact, they do it in broad daylight - with their propaganda campaign to exclude conservative thought from journalism. Journalists don’t claim superior wisdom, of course - that would be too obvious. So they use “objectivity” as a euphemism for wisdom - and claim that.