As a professional journalist what’s sad, to me, is the complete and utter erosion of standards in the trade that would have had something like this mess nixed by its first editor for both bias and self-pity at the desk level. There’s a reason these kids make the mistakes they do and take liberties with the truth. They never had to come up hard in a newsroom where truth and not a “narrative” are the only currency you, as a reporter, have. A place where respect is something earned, not just given.
When were there ever standards & when were facts ever important?
Look at the antifederalist vs Federalist newspaper wars!
Phillip Freneau’s (Jefferson/Madison protégé) National Gazette claiming that Washington wanted to be king! The Federalist’s newspapers made equally preposterous claims! The newspapers of the Civil War era, William Randolph Hearst and his news empire stampeding us into the Spanish-American War. There are many other examples! Its all about selling newspapers, ‘if it bleeds it leads’, wildest story gets the most readers, now viewers. Facts, correct information where is that required?
Now I am not saying don’t have news, newspapers or journalists (TV or print!) just be aware of what you’re reading or hearing/seeing. The reader or viewer motivation to get correct information is not the motivation that put the story there. I applaud the newsies who actually make the effort to get it right in spite of the constraints & rewards to the contrary. (Maybe even in spite of their personal biases!) They are distinct and truly persecuted minority
I come at the issue as a former news consumer. I learned during the Carter Administration that the news was slanted left. It should have been obvious earlier, and I had my doubts, but . . .After subscribing to the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report for a year, its stories of slanted reporting became a twice-told tale, and the only interesting question was why journalism was slanted left. It took me a shocking (in retrospect) length of time - decades - to even begin to really sort it out, but forty years later I have a pretty satisfactory formulation to explain it.
We all want objective reporting (or like to think we do), but ironically reporters claiming to be objective is actually the root of the problem. Why? Because all journalists know that journalism is negative, that “If it bleeds, it leads.” The consequence is that good news ends up on the cutting room floor, crowded out by bad news which will attract attention and sell newspapers. That is commercially sound practice in the business, but it is an inherently negative perspective. And only a cynic would say that “negativity is objectivity.” It follows that claiming that journalism is objective is a cynical exercise.
Journalism is cynical towards society. But as Thomas Paine pointed out in Common Sense, society and government are actually two very different things - in a very real sense, opposites. Government exists because society isn’t perfect - but government isn’t perfect, either. In fact, it’s a necessary evil, at best an unfortunately necessary expense. Criticism directed at society inevitably suggests the desirability of more government. More limitation on freedom, more expense - and also added opportunity for corruption as well. In the limiting case, socialism undertakes to subsume all of society into the government, making suppression of freedom the goal (well, that and the self-aggrandizement of the perpetrators).
The thing that has made this process so powerful and dangerous is - the Associated Press. The AP wire is a virtual meeting of all major US news organizations - ongoing since before the Civil War.
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)That is, you have to be excruciatingly naive to assume that, in over a century and a half, the membership of AP has not come up with a way of practicing on the gullibility of the public. And IMHO the “journalists are objective” swindle is it.People who are trying to be objective start from the assumption that something which they have not considered might be biasing their perspective. People who take their own objectivity for granted aren’t even trying to be objective. The AP stylebook has much to recommend it, I’m sure - but when it does things like rule out the publication of the expression “illegal alien,” that homogenizes journalism ideologically - and heterogeneity of journalism is the premise upon which the First Amendment (and the NY Times v. Sullivan decision) are based.
The Sherman AntiTrust Act dates back only to 1890; the AP was aggressively monopolistic pretty much from its inception several decades before that. The AP made a lot of sense, economically, when telegraphy bandwidth was very expensive. But as the Internet illustrates, telegraphy bandwidth is now dirt cheap, and it is not necessary to consider it or any wire service “too big to fail." It follows that the time is ripe to aggressively scrutinize the homogenizing influence of wire services in general and the AP in particular from an antitrust perspective.
All experience shows that the NY Times v. Sullivan decision, which makes it very hard for a Democrat or Republican politician to sue for libel, is exactly as evenhanded as the proverbial law ("equally applicable to rich and poor") against sleeping under bridges. Democrat politicians don’t get libeled; if an article announces that a Democrat has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar his party affiliation might eventually appear two-thirds of the way through the story. Reporters are vigilant for stories of Republican malfeasance, real or imaginary - and if a Republican is embarrassed by a story, his party affiliation will be in the lede.
Many bingos, jyo19. Tuth vs. narrative.