Really.
I am talking about your attacks on Fake News. They way I heard it is that in the old days a reporter worked on two or three stories a day, that were well erase arched and well thought out. That investigations could last for weeks and that the reporters spent that time trying to prove things and backing the story up with facts. You know, like they did in Watergate and how news reporters are depicted in movies.
The truth is that most news agencies have been run for profit in the past few years and that has meant less investigations and more stories written by less people. What do I mean. I mean news people who have to write a story every hour for the paper and that is not enough time to check the facts for each story. Fact checking includes calling up the people in the story and verifying that that was what they said.
One of the things that news people are relying on is reporting agencies, like Associates Press. They assume that AP has done that fact checking and that it passed muster, so it must be true, but these are Reporting Agencies, they Report what people said. Which is why I have not referred to news people as reporters; I was making a distinction, one that I should not have been making, because when they use AP as a source, that is all they are doing.
Reporting what people said is not telling any one what they are doing, it is just about what people are saying. It does not provide any background as to why they said it either. It tells us nothing except what they said. People say anything, they mig even be telling you lies and if you are reporting those lies, you are legitimizing those lies. Example? Someone tells you that diamonds are coal that has been pressed together for millions of years. If the person is a teacher, then it is held as fact, even though coal and diamonds are not related. Diamonds are crystallized carbon, found in igneous rock. Coal is sedimentary, but for many years teachers have been telling children that diamonds come from coal. Lies repeated so that everyone believes them.
News agencies, of all medias, need to not just report what was said, but provide context and analysis, otherwise they are just repeating what has been said and then people would not need anyone to buy the media, we would just need to get a recording to what was said and people could make up what they think people should know. Does that sound right? Would you want me telling you what you should believe, or would you like to make up your own mind with all the facts?
President Trump talked to the press and this is what he said: "!".
President Trump talked to the press and he stated :"!", which is odd because he stated in the past that "!" was bad. Current Economists feel that this was a great idea, even though in the past it was linked to a meltdown "here". Leading opponents believe that "!" will lead to "x" and not "y".
The whole point of partisan political bent on the media is you know that a news source will slant the analysis one way and another media source will slant it another direction. You read both sources and you chose the one that fits your own ideas best, but you read both to get a full picture. Or you can just read one and trust them to not steer you wrong, but then that is how we got here in the first place.
Trump telling the media that they are all liars and produce fake news has done a good thing. The good thing is that it points out that if you are just focused on reporting what was said you are doing your readers a disservice. If you provide a background and an analysis in every news story you are letting the reader decide and you are treating them like a thinking person rather than just a receptacle for data. People respect that and they will pay for it. Because it is their job to inform us and do the fact checking. It is our job to do what we do, not to fact check for them.
It is AP's job to report what people said. It is the investigative news person to provide the background, the fact checking, and the analysis. We the people, we buy their news.
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