Both-sidesing to death

Journalistic Norms Are Not a Suicide Pact’ 

 

“Mainstream journalism’s rigid genre conventions—

granting equal weight to ‘both sides,’ passing on

what both say without ‘editorializing’ as to the

truth value of the claim, let alone explaining how

one side intentionally and skillfully exploits those

norms to direct more attention to the lie than to

the truth—may have evolved with the intent of delivering maximal fairness

and accuracy. But in the here and now, they utterly fail to convey reality....

“Journalistic norms are not a suicide pact. If the authoritarians in control

of the Republican Party achieve enough power, they will start method

ically knocking off liberal institutions, including politically independent

journalism....  [The next] generation of journalists faces the staggering

burden of reconceptualizing their profession’s inherited rules for delivering

fairness and accuracy...in a way that lets news consumers accurately grasp

this election’s stakes.  

 

“Because if they do not, and the #bothsides norms now in place survive

unchanged, they might be the last generation of politically independent

journalists.” —Rick Perlstein (American Prospect, 10/2/24)

 

Extra! 

The Newsletter of FAIR—The Media Watch Group November 2024