My fellow Americans: when do you wish to start living as Russians have been made to live in the Age of Putin?
This morning, a conversational partner asked if journalism is so good — you know with empiricists, fact checkers, skeptics — why is it so shoddy?
Well, mainstream journalism has not been shoddy.
The other guy had merely loaded an accusation into a question.
Here’s the response –>
“Shoddy” — because you say it is?
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/10/23/fake-news-genuine-fake-news-the-real-fake-news-get-your-fake-news-here/
Where sources in business and government withhold information, there are are going to be some gaps, aren’t there?
That might be a source of incomplete news.
Where businesses and governments make up stories — or just lie — the press will catch them where it can, or the liars might just get away with it.
That might be a source of inaccurate news.
The mainstream journalists won’t be damaged.
Public trust will be damaged where businesses and governments choose to be dishonest.
Where that happens, democracy is dead.
Democracy is dead in China and in Russia and in other states where leaders refuse even the risk of a peaceful handover of power by way of the mechanism of (authentically) fair and free elections.
Democracy in the United States has been merely degraded by a ruthless and vindictive ideologue now infamous for lying about everything. For more (like this opinion from The Washington Post‘s fact checker columnist Glenn Kessler) and worse, look up “Trump, lies”.
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