Enough with "both sides"! Faux-neutral journalism is no way to fight the truth-deniers

[marmar]

Enough with "both sides"! Faux-neutral journalism is no way to fight the truth-deniers
With Trump defeated, journalists can't just retreat back to "objectivity" — not with America's future at stake

By DAN FROOMKIN
NOVEMBER 18, 2020 11:00AM


(Salon) The conventional wisdom among the leaders of our major newsrooms is that the best way to reach people who believe crazy, awful things is to remain neutral.

They maintain that taking sides would actually make news organizations even less credible with that particular population.

"We face an enormous burden of people who think that, if we're from one side or the other, they're just going to tune out and not pay attention to the world's best journalism," Associated Press executive editor Sally Buzbee said in September.

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet has repeatedly embraced what he calls "sophisticated true objectivity" as a defense against those who would have the Times counter falsehoods more assertively. You don't call it a lie, he has said. "Let somebody else call it a lie."

Countering the reformers' view that balanced criticism is naïve at this stage in American politics, National Public Radio public editor Kelly McBride recently described the dominant newsroom view as believing "that our current experience is particular to the Trump presidency, that American politics will eventually regain equilibrium, and that journalism's attachment to neutrality should remain consistent in order to remain effective over the long run." ......(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/18/enough-with-both-sides-faux-neutral-journalism-is-no-way-to-fight-the-truth-deniers/

[Just_Vote_Dem]

1. It's not neutrality if you fail to point out

that one political party in America has lost its collective minds
(and no MSM, it's not the Dems)

[CatLady78]

2. That is pretty obvious

To all but crappy businesses (in addition to every other type of backward, regressive and crazy)...

[Nitram]

3. I would also like to see mention made of the majority party when the Senate or the House conduct

a vote that divides exactly along party lines. No more of the "the Senate blocked immigration reform," when it was the Republican majority in the Senate that blocked immigration reform.