There are a number of good passages in Matt Taibbi’s most recent offering on media fact-checking but I think this is the best:
Like fact-checking itself, the “on the one hand and on the other hand†format is just a defense mechanism. These people say X, these people say Y, and because the jabbering mannequins we have reading off our teleprompters actually know jack, we’ll let the passage of time sort out the difficult bits.
The public used to appreciate the humility of that approach, but what they get from us more often now are sanctimonious speeches about how reporters are intrepid seekers of truth who sit next to God and gobble amphetamines so they can stay awake all night defending democracy from “misinformation.†But once you get past names, dates, and whether the sky that day was blue or cloudy, the worst kind of misinformation in journalism is to be too sure about anything. That’s especially when dealing with complex technical issues, and even more especially when official sources seem invested in eliminating discussion of alternative scenarios of those issues.
From the start, the press mostly mishandled Covid-19 reporting. Part of this was because nearly all of the critical issues — mask use, lockdowns, viability of vaccine programs, and so on — were marketed by news companies as culture-war narratives. A related problem had to do with news companies using the misguided notion that the news is an exact science to promote the worse misconception that science is an exact science. This led to absurd spectacles like news agencies trying to cover up or denounce as falsehood the natural reality that officials had evolving views on things like the efficacy of ventilators or mask use.
The title of this post is derived from a Latin wisecrack: quis custodiet ipsos custodes or “who guards the guards”? It’s from the satirist Juvenal. Another version of the same ancient wisdom is recorded in Matthew 5:13: “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?”
Hearkening back to my previous post one of the things that may be irretrievable in the aftermath of the pandemic could be any reputations for objectivity or impartiality or even fairness on the part of many media outlets.
Later in life the “most trusted man in America” admitted he biased his reporting on the Viet Nam War. Media who conveniently ignored the revolving door of women into JFK’s White House can be chalked up to the times. Cronkite admitted to fraud, or at best propaganda.
Were journalists ever a believable crew? I don’t know. I do know what has evolved during my lifetime is a so one sided media that they have become the unabashed mouthpiece for Democrats. And we used to make fun of Pravda….
Scarier still are characters like Fauci, who blow whichever way the wind blows on serious matters, all while invoking science. At least with a bubble headed bleach blond you get eye candy. Fauci’s pronouncements and outright lies have real consequences.
I have a couple of suggestions.
Newsrooms should leave behind “stealth edits” or edits made after publication that are unacknowledged or vaguely referenced in an asterisk.
They should do what Wikipedia does — which makes it accessible to viewers any previous version of an article along with an easy to visualize “diff” of what changed between versions.
Given the number of corrections that appear today (many sound innocent, but it is hard to tell), its not hard to imagine that skepticism turns into a fear the media is becoming a “ministry of truth”, albeit incompetent one.
The second is to dial back the AP style guide; either reliance of it by newsrooms or relax its strictures. Given these divisive times, its inevitable that language is drawn into melee, but when the style guide takes definitive positions on contested words — it too turns skepticism into a fear of “newspeak”.
Shorter Drew- I only believe people who write what I like.
Steve
At OTB, @James Joyner has a post, and he blames Trump. Apparently, the people who claim that Trump is incapable of telling the truth were fooled when Trump told the truth. If you can spot the logical error, you must be a Trump supporter.
The left is at the beginning of an existential crisis. With Trump gone, they have nowhere to turn but on themselves, and there is no imperitus to keep the truth obscured.
Once again, Progressivism is about to crash and burn, but it will not go alone. The Progressives will try to destroy as much as possible on their way out.
In the past year, nothing has changed in the COVID lab escape theory. It always was the most plausible, and the only difference is that Trump is not president. Anybody who denied this plausibility is an idiot.
If anything positive is the result of the COVID, Trump, and CO2 hysteria, it will be a return to falsification. In science and logic, falsifying something either proves it wrong or makes it stronger. Affirming one’s position is simple, but falsifying it is much more difficult.
Falsification includes “on the other hand” arguments, but it goes further. You must assume that what you believe to be absolutely true is actually false, and you must attempt to prove that this false position is correct. It requires intellectual honesty and philosophical rigor.
When you are designing a building, the foundation needs to be solid, and the most important soil analysis is the one that says it will sink. It does not matter how many positive results you get. It is the single negative one that is important, and you must actively look for it.
This is why the idea of “settled science” is moronic. Nothing is settled. Einstein proved it, and even his science is not settled.
Let the motherf*cker burn
Project much, steve? That was weak, even for you.
“Anybody who denied this plausibility is an idiot.”
Well, there’s the AP, Fauci, NYTs, Post, ABC, NBC, NPR, ……………and a certain medical professional.
I guess there are those who enjoy being pissed on.
https://www.westernjournal.com/psaki-says-biden-physically-fit-sometimes-hard-keep/
“I guess there are those who enjoy being pissed on.”
Yes, Steele documented that. Glad to see you acknowledge it.
Steve
And while we are fact checking we have more proof that another drug pushed by those on the right, like HCQ, doesnt work.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257595v1
Steve