Faux journalism versus good journalism
by David Atkins
Nate Silver takes aim at Politico:
“Politico is … it’s like ‘Who won the day?’ kind of thing, right?” Silver responded. “They’re trying to cover it like it’s sports, but not in an intelligent way at all, right? And they want to create noise, basically, right? Their whole thing is, you have to have a lead story about some gaffe that some candidate made on the campaign trail.”
Of course, the same could be said of most of the political press.
The alternative, of course, would be to try to get at the truth. That would be journalism. Good journalism would then not only report the truth, but report it in context.
For instance, here’s what passes for faux journalism these days:
“Democrats and Republicans divided as fiscal cliff looms.”
Here’s what actual journalism would look like:
“As fiscal cliff looms, Democrats offer major spending cuts; Republicans refuse tax increases on wealthy.”
Here’s what good journalism would look like:
“Democrats plan to cut assistance to poor during massive recession as Republicans defend record low tax rates on the wealthy at time of record income income inequality, while Congress nears self-imposed arbitrary deficit deadline.”
Good luck getting them to do that, though. Good journalism is hard.
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