Wittes: Why the "main-stream media" is still a better source for information than Twitter or altnews
I don't want to pick fights with individuals, but let me say a few words about why I believe in traditional journalism, and why I ... /1/
do not believe in the current propensity to make extravagant factual claims about things that are "in the works" to happen in the future /2/
in the guise of reportage. People hate the maintream media. I get it. But there really is a discipline to good investigative reporting. /3/
I've worked with a lot of great reporters, both as colleagues and--sometimes--as a source to them. The good ones do not just write... /4/
down what you say and then race to get it up as "sources saying" XX or why. When @nytmike came to my office to talk to me about my... /5/
conversations with Comey, he literally had me draw a map of Comey's office. He came back to me again and again to check facts. /6/
And when the facts came out during Comey's testimony, his reporting stood up incredibly well, fact by fact, detail by detail. /7/
This is not to say good reporters don't make mistakes--even big ones. It happens. But here are a few things good reporters don't do. /8/
They do NOT report breathlessly about what other reporters may be working on. If they can't scoop them, that is get the story first, /9/
they take the hit and follow up. You will never see the New York Times report that the Washington Post is about to break a story on /10/
XX that it has no independent knowledge of but its sources say that the Post's sources say is true. Or vice versa. Does. Not. Happen. /11/
Good reporters also do NOT report about institutions or institutional actors that do not exist, and they confine their reporting to ... /12/
the powers that the relevant institutional actors actually have. /13/
They also do NOT throw around terms like "treason" without a refined and careful sense of what they do and do not mean. /14/
And at least when they're doing their jobs well, they're telling you what HAS happened or what IS happening. Be suspicious of people... /15/
...who purport in the guise of "reporting" to tell you what WILL happen. Good reporters are not prophets--and don't pretend to be. /16/
One other thing about good reporting. It's replicatable. If someone comes out and says something dramatic and it's exactly what you ... /17/
want to be true, believe should be true, and if no reputable news organization is reporting it, be suspicious. It's probably because /18/
it's not true, or because it's not clearly true, or because someone isn't credible enough to rely on without more support. /19/
It's probably not because a blogger has gotten the blockbuster that the big kids all missed--though that's possible. Exercise caution. /20/
And ask yourself before you retweet it whether you're really helping a democratic polity understand its current reality--or whether... /21/
you're just adding noise. And ask yourself as well whether you're raising expectations of dramatic events that won't actually happen. /22/
Ask yourself, in other words, whether you might be inadvertently propagating lies. /23/
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