patrick.net

Much like America, journalism has descended into anarchy in recent weeks. While progressive politicians push to abolish the police, prominent journalists are calling to abolish the long-standing principle of reporting news objectively. ...

The nation’s so-called “newspaper of record” recently became ground zero for this "Bizarro World" journalism, an initiative that threatens to destroy the credibility of the craft by making it seem unprincipled, dishonest, and biased.

After staffers protested the New York Times publishing Republican Sen. Tom Cotton's controversial op-ed on nationwide protests, the editorial page editor resigned, and the newspaper promised to change its policies.

Due to the "tumult" caused by Donald Trump's presidency, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan argued the old approach of “‘... ‘represent all points of view equally’ is absurd and sometimes wrongheaded.”

60 Minutes correspondent Wesley Lowery declared: “... ‘objectivity’-obsessed, both-sides journalism is a failed experiment. We need to fundamentally reset the norms of our field. The old way must go.” ...

But the opposite is true. Journalism’s long-standing principles did not fail; rather, journalists failed to adhere to them. As journalists abandoned those core values in favor of an alternative approach, public trust in the press declined.

“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old. … They literally know nothing,” observed Obama adviser Ben Rhodes in 2016.

Indeed, among today’s journalists, nearly 80% are white, only 7% are conservative, and a significant number live in one of three cities — a demographic completely unrepresentative of America. Most reporters are generalists with humanities degrees, many are millennials, and few come from poor backgrounds.

Should we entrust them to “tell it like it is” to a working-class family in Nebraska?

... in recent weeks, reporters have wildly speculated on health issues, such as the Atlantic article predicting great “human sacrifice” when Georgia ended its COVID-19 lockdown in late April. A month later, coronavirus cases hadn’t surged. ...

The press has even publicized fake news, such as the CNN, Politico, Newsweek, New York Daily News, and Associated Press reporters who grossly misrepresented Trump's remarks about George Floyd.

This penchant for narratives over facts has likewise led to deeply flawed reporting by the New York Times's staff on major stories ranging from Russiagate to the history of slavery.

When experts have attempted to challenge popular media narratives either by publishing opinion pieces in the outlets or on alternate platforms such as YouTube, journalists have sought to censor them.

There is a remedy for this problem. Because journalists’ perception of reality is vulnerable to distortions and biases, the profession a century ago adopted a practice similar to the scientific method to discover the truth. It’s known as objectivity.

“The concept … [does] not imply that journalists [a]re free of bias,” the American Press Institute explains. “It call[s], rather, for a consistent method of testing information — a transparent approach to evidence — precisely so that personal and cultural biases [do] not undermine the accuracy of the work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. [It] is what separates journalism from other forms of communication such as propaganda, advertising, fiction." ...

The New York Times, of all news outlets, should know better. Objectivity standards exist precisely because of its past failures.

In August 1920, Walter Lippmann published a “scathing account of how cultural blinders had distorted the New York Times coverage of the Russian Revolution,” API notes. “The news about Russia is a case of seeing not what was, but what men wished to see,” Lippmann wrote.

So, he and others developed ways for journalists “to remain clear and free of his irrational, his unexamined, his unacknowledged prejudgments in observing, understanding and presenting the news.”

Unfortunately, history is repeating itself at the New York Times. But given the current staff’s questionable understanding of history, perhaps it's no surprise.