Is it bad for the media to call out lying and police misinformation?

So you guys are just screaming for flashy headlines?

NEW RECORD: TRUMP AWARDED 8 PINOCCHIOS

Certainly non-editorial. Which, they’ve always been like that?

I’d like to see, “Trump lies about passing Veterans Choice” as a headline or “Trump has lied 50 times about veteran choice in the last year”

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It seems like what you are saying is this is bad journalism:

Public Figure X claims Y, but Y is known to be untrue. Public figure X is lying about Y.

But this is good journalism:

Public figure X claims Y, but opponents of Public Figure say not Y.

All people are saying is that when Y is obviously false, the second approach here actively misleads the reader and cannot possibly serve the public interest.

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It’s a weird hybrid that usually isn’t on the opinion page and started popping up in the Post and Times about 15 years ago.

and when Biden lies, point that shit out too, no one here would care if they were doing the same but if they are posting lie headlines on the volume the candidates do it, obv trump would be way worse off

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No the second is bad journalism. It’s just reporting quotes by political hacks, who cares.

The first is also bad journalism but could be OK with some tweaks.

“Public Figure X claims Y”

OK so far.

“but Y is known to be untrue”

Says who? The journalist? Just common knowledge? If the journalist actually talks to experts or people who have specific knowledge of the situation and shows that there is no basis for Y, well, that seems like good journalism to me.

“Public figure X is lying about Y.”

Again, why? The journalist has just shown what the truth is. If he did a good job then anyone can see that. And the journalist’s whole voice is one of dispassionate and objective observer of what’s happening. It just doesn’t fit with the tone and voice of a newspaper piece or the CBS evening news or whatever. And that’s why there’s an editorial page and Andy Rooney yelling at the end of 60 minutes.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1316456920623050752
https://mobile.twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1316458932995530753

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Those aren’t mutually exclusive?

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twitter squashing this post story will become a bigger narrative than the burisma bullshit. Few things unite the MAGAs and the MAGA-curious more than censorship of their stories.

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1316460037963825152

edit to add nested tweet:

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1316456656847347712

And of course he runs to…

https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316458345725939714?s=21

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I appreciate your thoughtful response but I just cannot square this with the observed reality of the past 5 years. It would follow that CNN’s reporting on Trump up to the 2016 election and early in his Presidency better served the public interest than their shift toward coming right out and saying he is lying and has been lying and constantly lies. In my opinion it is the duty of any profession to put the public interest ahead of any commitment to professional guidelines on what is or is not common practice. I want doctors that help people get and stay healthy, I want engineers that build bridges that don’t collapse, I want chefs that prepare food that is safe to eat, I want lawyers that … well forget about lawyers. In any event, when the public interest conflicts with professional practice you should change professional practice.

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This is the real descent into fascism shit imo. Not parsing “falsely claimed” vs. “lied”.

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Whichever side helps his guy DJT get re-elected. The potato man is a single issue voter, Make Trolling Great Again.

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OK but in my view, reporting what happened and reporting what the pertinent facts are and letting the readers draw their own conclusions is what the media should be doing if they were primarily concerned about the public interest. Flashy headlines proclaiming that Trump is a liar? Not so much imo. FWIW I actually think a lot of reporting, and certainly basically all of what’s on CNN or MSNBC, fits into the two types of “journalism” that you described. And indeed, CNN did switch from “Public figure X claims Y, but opponents of Public Figure say not Y” to “Public Figure X claims Y, but Y is known to be untrue. Public figure X is lying about Y” pre-election to post-election. And of course they didn’t make this shift because of any adherence to journalistic standards or commitment to the public interest. They did that for the exact same reason that they obsessively covered Trump before the election: because covering Trump in that way, when everyone assumed he would lose, got eyeballs watching CNN. And as I said, both are bad journalism.

But I actually don’t think the Times straight news articles are bad, actually they’re often quite good. And if they shifted to making judgements and conclusions like calling Trump a liar, that wouldn’t be a positive change at all.

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Keeed is way off. POTUS lying to the people should be newsworthy and not just an opinion piece.

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This is certainly part of it. A pattern of lies is more significant than a single lie, even a single blatant harmful lie.

Congratulations on discovering the principle that it takes orders of magnitude more effort to debunk bullshit than it does to spew it.

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I was expecting so much more from this thread

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