You might find The Hill’s investigation of its own handling of John Solomon’s columns published at The Hill on Ukraine interesting. I did. Here’s its opening:
On Nov. 18, 2019, The Hill announced it was reviewing John Solomon’s opinion columns on Ukraine after State Department diplomats criticized several of those columns during House impeachment hearings.
This review was conducted independently by The Hill’s news staff under the direction of Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack.
The Hill established working panels for each of 14 relevant pieces that appeared on TheHill.com. These working groups analyzed and discussed the columns at length, looking at possible corrections and/or context that could have been added at the time of the writings. In addition, The Hill reviewed congressional testimony and other public documentation related to Solomon’s columns, as well as related media reports, to add editor’s notes to the columns regarding what has been learned since the columns were posted by The Hill. The Hill also reviewed its editorial policies and processes.
and its closing graf:
Solomon’s Ukraine columns represented a departure from The Hill’s standard opinion content because they attempted to blend opinion and investigative, “original reporting” material. The Hill will avoid such blending of reporting and opinion columns going forward.
I find the free and, frequently, undetectable intermingling of news and opinion problematic, indeed, journalism’s single gravest problem. Here at The Glittering Eye I have frequently urged a return to 5W-style news writing over the point-of-view favored today. I hope other news organizations or what used to be news organizations follow The Hill’s example and perform critical examinations of their own practices.
Advocacy journalism disguised as unbiased reporting always has been and always will be with us. Witness Walter Duranty’s whitewashing of the Holomdor or Edwards Murrow’s tense reporting of the London Blitz. It’s always up to us readers to distinguish opinion from facts. The worst thing the Walter Cronkitish brand of ‘fair and balanced’ reporting did was make people believe that TV and newspaper reporting was actually always fair and balanced (except when it was the other guy’s reporting, of course). Give me slanted opinion pieces any day, I think I have a pretty good BS detector. And sometimes even in the most biased column nuggets of real knowledge occasionally pop out.
I didnt see any examination or illumination of the Solomon reported facts or evidence. I have seen zero contra-evidence to Solomon’s reporting. None. I have watched interviews with Solomon in which he painstakingly points out that he has what he has, and what he doesn’t have. And in which he refuses to speculate beyond what he cannot support. But puts his very reputation and career on what he can support factually.
Nice hatchet job.
“I hope other news organizations or what used to be news organizations follow The Hill’s example and perform critical examinations of their own practices.”
Not sure why they bother. People want to believe that opinion is the same as fact. See above. What has been happening and will continue is that these kinds of writers will just gravitate to some media where they will allowed to be able to publish option as fact and the audience will eat it up. Much better business model if you think about it. Not much integrity or many concerns about truth, but that doesn’t pay very well.
Steve