If there is one message that should be taken away from the events of the last several weeks, indeed, the events of the last several years, it is that skepticism should be the order of the day. Neither acceptance nor rejection of claims but patience and a willingness to allow the facts to emerge in the fullness of time. Credulity, whether in acceptance or rejection, has costs, not just in financial terms as the Washington Post and numerous other organizations and individuals are finding out to their sorrow, to those against whom false claims are lodged as well as to those who make real, true accusations.
Do we really want a country sort of like a giant East Germany or Romania in which no one can trust anyone else and that anyone’s life can be blighted by false accusations? Or in which people are afraid to make real, true accusations? I’m afraid that’s where we’re heading.
The last thing we need is affiliational truth, a situation in which “your truth”, as Oprah might say, is determined by your affiliations rather than by evidence and reason.
Way too late. You dont mention here that people are now rewarded for lying. It helped get Trump the presidency. His supporters defend his lying and attacks on his lying further entrench his support.
As to the media, speed is the only thing that matters. In depth, analytical journalism is mostly gone. Getting the story out first far outweighs accuracy. Besides, advocacy “journalism” seems to pay better.
Steve
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
As to advocacy journalism paying better I’m not so sure:
Donald Trump is only one man, an aging grandfather under attack by politicians and government funded lawyers and investigators determined to jail him for the last days of his life. He works for the greater good, not his own pocket. He tells the truth as he sees it, weaving a unique verbal tapestry that encompasses the hopes of all Americans. Much of the milder resistance he faces is for failing to include the population of the entire world in his vision of hope.
Unlike other presidents, he seems humbly aware of limitations to his ability to transform the arc of history, and to mold nations and cultures in an idyllic dream. Like a carpenter, he chooses the best materials and builds towards a finished goal, board by board, brick by brick, slat by slat, patiently building the future we can’t yet all admit we need.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/highest-paid-radio-show-hosts.html/
You may want to quibble about these folks being journalists, but with the modern conservative movement, these are the people who really do act as their journalists and spiritual guides. See above.
Steve
Radio talk show hosts are entertainers. That’s not a quibble. You’re comparing different categories.
Matt Damon gets about $25 million per movie and he also advocates political positions. That’s irrelevant to whether advocacy journalism pays. The reality is that as a money-making endeavor journalism is collapsing. Some blame it on the Internet; others blame it on journalists taking political positions people don’t want to pay any attention to.
You think they are entertainers. I think they should be considered entertainers, but for people on the right, they are now a major source of news. You may not like that, but thats just how it is.
Matt Damon? Really? He has a daily show I dont know about? Weekly even? Any celebrity that wants to do so seems to be able to provide political commentary and that applies to famous people on the left and the right. That has always existed. However, you dont hear people saying “I tuned into the Matt Damon show last night to hear the truth about ….” James actually wrote about this when he touched upon low brow conservatism. Besides the ones who get rich, you also have the ones who would never be able to get work as writers or journalists if they had to actually go out and research stories. That includes all of the unknown out there in talk radio and the ones writing for the advocacy sites like Breitbart and HuffPo.
Steve
Your definition of a journalist is someone who has opinions, a daily show, and is believed? By that definition Liberace was a journalist.
I suspect that my definition of journalist would be close to yours. However, we are talking about what other people believe. It is pretty clear, and has been polled, that people get heir news, and in particular they get the news they claim to trust, from people we would not consider journalists. Get out of Chicago and you hear it all of the time. People dont read the major newspapers and often brag about it. They certainly dont read journals or anything close to long form articles. They get spoon-fed the news they want to hear by the TV or radio source of their choice. If they are younger, throw in social media. I understand that you dont want to call these people journalists, but they are fulfilling the same roles that were filled by journalists in the past. Pick another name if you want, but the effect is still the same. (To be clear, Stewart used to fill that role on the left also. He at least loudly and repeatedly claimed he was just an entertainer, but his audience treated what he said as gospel truth pretty often.)
Steve
I know a lot of people who get their “news†from “The Daily Show†and late night comedy programs. Others get “news†from advocacy websites and groups on Facebook. I’d need to check again, but more people watch the cable “news†opinion shows than watch straight news segments.
There’s a marketplace of ideas and people will read/watch/listen to what they want. Talk radio isn’t any special in that regard. I wish people would consume more factual sources, but they don’t.
And, increasingly, journalists are becoming indistinguishable from advocates. Like anything else, caveat emptor.