At Techdirt, Mike Masnick says that “the mainstream media is catastrophically failing to meet the moment.” An excerpt:
When reporters feel compelled to add “experts say” to basic mathematical facts [the impossibility of lowering drug prices by 1500%] or treat war crimes [blowing up boats] as matters of legitimate debate, they’re not being neutral — they’re actively misleading their audience into believing basic facts are up for debate among “experts.”
The pattern is clear: mainstream media has become so terrified of appearing biased that they’ve abandoned their basic responsibility to clearly communicate truth to the public. They’d rather hide behind the false comfort of “some say” and “experts disagree” than plainly state obvious facts. This isn’t objectivity — it’s cowardice. And it’s precisely why trust in media continues to crater.
comments: 2
Oops, I think I posted my comment for here, above. Well, I was a campus reporter and within a semester, or a year at most, we all knew what journalism ethics were, from each other. Our writing, I thought, was almost as good as real papers, although we would take much longer to finish a piece.
We had yearly journalism conferences where we would have hashed out how to behave in a post truth world. I could ask if their conferences cover such things.
Ha – I just posted this to Bluesky! So obvious but it's not said enough.
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