Great CNN puff piece. I would agree that correcting the lab leak story would be “accountability” IF the story unfolded in the innocent manner that this article attempts to paint…
Fact is: it did not. There was a strong body at the time that a lab leak was a real possibility. In fact, we now have evidence that information and opinions were manipulated to discredit lab leak hypothesis.
But was the MSM (a/k/a, the guardians of freedom) the least bit curious? No. They brought the disinformation story hook, line & sinker and ran with it. The “experts” that the MSM outlets (like CNN) put on the air openly mocked the idea. Fauci said it didn’t happen despite what we now know about him towing the narrative for others.
But the critical part of the problem isn’t that they got the story wrong. It’s that there was ABSOLUTELY ZERO journalist curiosity at the time about the origin. Why? Simple: Trump said it came from the Wuhan lab so that now cannot be what happened.
We have all witnessed this same “M.O.” with the Russian Dossier and the Hunter Biden laptop. The MSM didn’t get these stories wrong - they actively engaged in willful blindness that involved covering up the truth - something they are still engaged in to this very day. They never ever entertained the thought that the story may have more and different facts and truly investigated that angle - not once.
But now that Biden’s president, they can try and use this opportunity to “un-spin” the cover-up in the vain attempt to regain an semblance of integrity they wrongly perceive they have left.
But people are too smart - they can smell a rat in the woodpile. Accountability is not defined as simply taken action AFTER you’ve been caught red handed - like CNN - it involves making sure it doesn’t happen again, but for the MSM (and CNN and MSNBC in particular) that would be way too hard a job to really address.
So expect more “fake news” and more disinformation…and certainly more puff piece about how proactive and accountable the MSM is in doing their job.
You mean the meeting looking for op-research on Clinton that went nowhere? Or the offhand "request" Trump made for her deleted 30k emails? LOL. I'm more concerned that the Steele Dossier was spun out of whole cloth and used by the FBI and the CIA to justify spying on an opposition presidential campaign and US citizens. They question is: why aren't you?
You probably still believe that Trump took Russian golden showers. Right?
No. I mean the meeting Manafort had with a Russian agent. I mean the multiple meetings Papadopoulos had with a suspected Russian agent who has since disappeared, after which he bragged about having Clinton's emails more than a month before the DNC hacking was reported in the media. I mean Trump's obfuscation about that the DNC hacking was anyone *but* Russia when he had already been briefed by multiple intelligence agencies.
I mean the Trump campaign failing to report to the FBI contacts with Russian nationals after specifically being asked to do that in a briefing for both major party candidates.
I mean Trump's successfully obstructing justice by pardoning Manafort and commuting Stone's sentence in exchange for their silence.
I'm not a Trump guy, so I'm not going to defend him, but none of this has been proven to be anything other than hysteria whipped up by a hostile leftist media.
Where are the outcomes of the collusion? Where are the facts on the ground that support outcomes of a nefarious nature driven by collusion? I don't see it - and I'm happy to acknowledge facts as facts.
The stuff I mentioned above is real, and was uncovered by credible prosecutors. The FBI and their justice department conspirators actually lied about Carter Page not being a CIA informant so they could continue to spy on him to be able to try to get at Trump. That's a real problem bro...and there was no justification for it. Just say the words - and you'll have more credibility in this discussion.
The author keeps doubling down on this interpretation, but I don't know how many of us who saw it in real time will be convinced.
His thinking seems to be that either we accept the MSM as flawed but basically reliable or we're -- oh my stars and garters -- playing "Trump's game"! He seems unaware that, to paraphrase Portia, "The quality of skepticism is not strained." My lack of trust in the New York Times -- which it has come by honestly over the course of decades, but never more so than now -- doesn't increase my trust in Trump one whit.
This article tries to make the case that lying is somehow virtuous if it’s done to counteract a greater “evil” and especially if the lie is later admitted and “corrected”…
But lies aren’t truths in disguise by virtue of the reason the lie is put forward or by virtue of the interests the lie is intended to serve, but that’s how the MSM thinks..
I am a big fan of Jonathan Rauch and cannot think of a better person to contribute significantly to a journal upholding and extolling the virtues of philosophical liberalism, but this is where he and I will have to agree to disagree.
I share Rauch's concern over Trump's ability to corrupt and destroy our institutions from the inside, and that the media cannot operate in such a subversion, and so when they do recognize fault, I am relieved to see it. My suspicion from watching media closely, however, is that much of this corrective behavior would not manifest without a great deal of public scrutiny and demand for correction, which is oftentimes ignored or reduced to stealth editing. The trouble isn't an inability to course-correct, it is an infidelity to basic tenets of journalism—the same ones in which Rauch himself was trained and rightly believes in—are ignored and instead treated as a necessary casualty to furthering a mostly Manichaean narrative that goes beyond (and in some cases pre-dates) any reaction to Trumpian tactics. This isn't to downplay Trump's (imho) enormous wrongdoing, but even if you take Trump out of the equation, you get the same stifling groupthink which these outlets have helped to go fully mainstream.
To simply give the media a chocolate chip cookie and an "attaboy" for correcting themselves is to miss a larger, more industry-wide lacking in fitness for purpose that was already happening. The thing I feel Rauch doesn't see clearly is that Trump is the (regrettable and enormously damaging) reaction to the culture of illiberalism that preceded him, and the MSM's counter-reaction to him was to lean into it rather than to learn from it.
It's not just that the mainstream media were overly gullible, it's that social media gatekeepers piled on and blocked posts on the topic, making it seem even more underground and suspicious and conspiracy-theory-ish. Real scientists posting on this topic were blocked by the powers-that-be at Twitter and Facebook. This is not just 'free-press-business-as-usual'.
Yes. And to this point I would argue that the big tech censorship of the lab leak hyposthesis was a MAJOR part of the lab leak story that the media needed to cover but simply ignored for obvious partisan reasons. That is itself a failure within the failure. And it's a sad irony becasue the 10 years ago internet is what put the media under pressure--so if the media had stood up to big tech when it counted most that could have been the low water mark. Instead they blew a huge opportunity to win back their audience. Censorship of all kinds by big tech continues to be a huge, complex and mind blowingly difficult issue--and therefore a huge story(!)--and the media continues to fail the country by essentially pretending there's really no story there beyond the alleged need to remove and ban misinformation from the hard right. In fact "free speech" and "what to do with the internet" appear to have intextricably merged into one problem that is probably the most important story of our day: this story effects all of us and the media needs to report the issue instead of supporting this monoloithic approach of just fighting the right at all costs. A solid first step would be to stop explicitly or implicitly blaming all institutional failures on Trump supporters.
This piece addresses a straw man issue(Trumps straw man issue) and rebuts nothing in the way of serious media criticism. The near-complete collapse of the mainstream media is chronicled perfectly well by Bari Weisse and many others so it is neither helpful or necessary to invoke Trump with so many superior critics to choose from. If Rauch seeks to convince us that the system is working perhaps he can explain why we should not be utterly appalled by (i) the lack of serious in depth reporting over what took place at Evergreen State with the ostracising of Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying from that community (ii) the utterly disgraceful and shallow "reporting" of the riots and unrest in Portland where the mayor obviously enjoys the support of sympathetic media staffers almost everywhere (iii) the "nothing to see here" non-reporting of the rise of cancel culture and cencoriousness in our educational institutions and beyond. Any so called free press that is unable to hold the line against--of all things-- facebook and twitter mobs is just simply not working for democracy.
And if I may be allowed one related point: Apoorva Mandavilli, who wrote “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
I am the absolute last person to want someone fired over a tweet, a pernicious statement or even obvious bigotry, but how does a person like that have a job in *journalism*?!
They have a job in "activist journalism", and with that job description, she's more than qualified. I just ignore that kind of nonsense, and listen to sources I trust.
Rauch fails to acknowledge that the purpose of the suppression of the lab leak story was INHERENTLY political - to prevent the Trump Administration from being able to effectively blame China and create a story that was counter to the story the corporate media was pushing: That Trump was single-handedly responsible for every Covid death in the US, and the crashing of the economy, due to personal malfeasance and his racist, xenophobia. The goal was to defeat him in the election using this narrative. It clearly worked, or at least significantly contributed to the outcome of the election.
Trump made lots of mistakes, and clearly, his early efforts to downplay the pandemic were rooted in his political self-interest and were, of course, outrageous. However, the media's clear burying of this story was not just a mistake, it was first and foremost a political act. The correct approach would have been to pull on the threads of the story and get the facts out no matter where they led, independently, and not just fall in line for political expediency. Never mind the fact that the latest reversal is likely due to a Chinese scientist defecting and providing the truth about the situation - a truth that the Biden administration is likely suppressing further to prevent a crisis with China, and derail his attempts to become Lyndon Delano Roosevelt...
We should not be congratulating the media on getting it right once the political stakes were lowered, and a friendly administration was installed, in part, due to their participation in a narrative that helped install Biden.
I essentially agree with everything else you said, but I think it's impossible to read Kindly Inquisitors or the Constitution of Knowledge and credibly call him a "dishonest hack", assuming you think liberalism is a thing worth conserving. Rauch is one of our top minds, who is also capable of having a bad take, which I think this is. I posted my own criticism of this article, in case you think I'm just gainsaying.
I know I was being pretty strong by calling him a hack...but to me - for a guy who is supposedly throwing around some level of "dedication to the truth", the only way I can make sense of it is that it's willful obfuscation to help the leftist media save face.
If you agree with my criticisms, and this guy is the real deal, how can he come to the conclusion that he did other than because he prefers on explanation politically over the other? Oversight? Lack of rigor? I can't find a reason that makes sense to me, other than he wants to protect the tactics, and/or his relationships with media people who are playing that game.
I share your incredulity 100%, and you may be right. It is as though he wants to afford Journalism™, which is his own professional ecosystem, an indulgence. In a sense, Rauch's own one-sided reaction follows on from his own thesis that the subversion by Trump caused a once-stable, virtuous system to operate in panic mode, that it's 100% Trump's responsibility and no further questions, your honor. There is the mention of Zaid Jilani's quote, which I tend to side with, but it doesn't lead anywhere in the article to any sort of media self-awareness... or indeed his own.
All I'm saying is I can't write off somebody who is 99% making a great deal of sense, but has a blind spot that makes none at all, particularly as it concerns the dysfunction of a major sense-making apparatus. You may want to ascribe to it incompetence or a corrupt motive, which is understandable, but I think it might just be good old TDS, which hopefully will heal over time. I wish I had a better idea than that, but I have to accept that his is a view I am having great difficulty being persuaded of, and that's okay. Despite what I know to be his soundness, Rauch's article does not deserve its own indulgence, which is why you and I are both moaning about it here. The civil exchange is much appreciated, LosPer.
I just have gotten to the point where I don't accept any critique that blames Trump for media incompetence. The media was a player in every element of the Trump matter: they elevated him during the primary for money/clicks and to help make an unqualified, narcissistic, con-man the Republican nominee, thinking he would be easy to beat and destroy the Republican brand. And when Hillary lived up to being a terrible candidate and he beat her, they needed to atone by making him the devil and tearing him down.
I just have no patience for any media apologists. The built him up for self-serving reasons, and then tore him down the same way, but for different reasons. The fact they got all twisted up in becoming activists and missed the story of the century is on them - and media historians like Rauch giving the media a pass "because Trump" doesn't cut it.
Did Trump make honest, fact-based journalism hard for center-left reporters? Yes. Does that mean they get a pass? No. It means you work harder and put your biases aside. If there was no market for fact-based journalism that was Trump-neutral or in any way Trump exculpating, that's on them, too. There's nothing that says good journalism has to make your audience happy: It just has to be thorough, accurate, and fact-based. Kind of what they are trying to do here at Persuasion. I read more from Yascha and Glenn Greenwald more than I ever have these days, because they are more committed to truth than they are to supporting leftist narratives.
I see that other commenters are going into details, so I won't. Alas, this particular column by Mr. Rauch strikes me as weak. If you are new to his writings and disagree with him on this column, don't write him off.
“It is true that healthy journalistic skepticism can cross over into partisan political favoritism, but that is not what happened in this case, because the politician at issue is Donald Trump.”
I disagree. Donald Trump’s mendacity justify extreme skepticism but not outright dismissal before investigating the facts, which is what happened with COVID reporting. Yes, better that they retracted later but so much damage had already been done hoping the most important of which was creating the unalterable impression of miss trust in the media within a large segment of our nations population.
Left on addressed in your article but IMHO equally important- is the delatforming of scientists-which still goes on to this day- on YouTube, Facebook etc. The hubris of these “fact checkers” who believe them selves capable of comprehending much less critiquing and even censoring what their betters are discussing in scientific circles is astonishing beyond words.
You damn with faint praise by applauding media outlets for belatedly refocusing on the crux of the issue after months of knee-jerking an anti-Trump reaction.
Great CNN puff piece. I would agree that correcting the lab leak story would be “accountability” IF the story unfolded in the innocent manner that this article attempts to paint…
Fact is: it did not. There was a strong body at the time that a lab leak was a real possibility. In fact, we now have evidence that information and opinions were manipulated to discredit lab leak hypothesis.
But was the MSM (a/k/a, the guardians of freedom) the least bit curious? No. They brought the disinformation story hook, line & sinker and ran with it. The “experts” that the MSM outlets (like CNN) put on the air openly mocked the idea. Fauci said it didn’t happen despite what we now know about him towing the narrative for others.
But the critical part of the problem isn’t that they got the story wrong. It’s that there was ABSOLUTELY ZERO journalist curiosity at the time about the origin. Why? Simple: Trump said it came from the Wuhan lab so that now cannot be what happened.
We have all witnessed this same “M.O.” with the Russian Dossier and the Hunter Biden laptop. The MSM didn’t get these stories wrong - they actively engaged in willful blindness that involved covering up the truth - something they are still engaged in to this very day. They never ever entertained the thought that the story may have more and different facts and truly investigated that angle - not once.
But now that Biden’s president, they can try and use this opportunity to “un-spin” the cover-up in the vain attempt to regain an semblance of integrity they wrongly perceive they have left.
But people are too smart - they can smell a rat in the woodpile. Accountability is not defined as simply taken action AFTER you’ve been caught red handed - like CNN - it involves making sure it doesn’t happen again, but for the MSM (and CNN and MSNBC in particular) that would be way too hard a job to really address.
So expect more “fake news” and more disinformation…and certainly more puff piece about how proactive and accountable the MSM is in doing their job.
It's almost as if lying thousands of times as president makes people less inclined to believe you.
Russian collusion happened, btw.
You’re exactly right on Russian collusion which further proves my point…
Russian collusion happened between the Democrats and Russia with the MSM running “cover” for the Deep State, the Clintons and the DNC..
Shameful…
Paid $10 million for a bunch of lies and these people want to run the country?
You mean the meeting looking for op-research on Clinton that went nowhere? Or the offhand "request" Trump made for her deleted 30k emails? LOL. I'm more concerned that the Steele Dossier was spun out of whole cloth and used by the FBI and the CIA to justify spying on an opposition presidential campaign and US citizens. They question is: why aren't you?
You probably still believe that Trump took Russian golden showers. Right?
No. I mean the meeting Manafort had with a Russian agent. I mean the multiple meetings Papadopoulos had with a suspected Russian agent who has since disappeared, after which he bragged about having Clinton's emails more than a month before the DNC hacking was reported in the media. I mean Trump's obfuscation about that the DNC hacking was anyone *but* Russia when he had already been briefed by multiple intelligence agencies.
I mean the Trump campaign failing to report to the FBI contacts with Russian nationals after specifically being asked to do that in a briefing for both major party candidates.
I mean Trump's successfully obstructing justice by pardoning Manafort and commuting Stone's sentence in exchange for their silence.
I'm not a Trump guy, so I'm not going to defend him, but none of this has been proven to be anything other than hysteria whipped up by a hostile leftist media.
Where are the outcomes of the collusion? Where are the facts on the ground that support outcomes of a nefarious nature driven by collusion? I don't see it - and I'm happy to acknowledge facts as facts.
The stuff I mentioned above is real, and was uncovered by credible prosecutors. The FBI and their justice department conspirators actually lied about Carter Page not being a CIA informant so they could continue to spy on him to be able to try to get at Trump. That's a real problem bro...and there was no justification for it. Just say the words - and you'll have more credibility in this discussion.
The author keeps doubling down on this interpretation, but I don't know how many of us who saw it in real time will be convinced.
His thinking seems to be that either we accept the MSM as flawed but basically reliable or we're -- oh my stars and garters -- playing "Trump's game"! He seems unaware that, to paraphrase Portia, "The quality of skepticism is not strained." My lack of trust in the New York Times -- which it has come by honestly over the course of decades, but never more so than now -- doesn't increase my trust in Trump one whit.
Great point…
This article tries to make the case that lying is somehow virtuous if it’s done to counteract a greater “evil” and especially if the lie is later admitted and “corrected”…
But lies aren’t truths in disguise by virtue of the reason the lie is put forward or by virtue of the interests the lie is intended to serve, but that’s how the MSM thinks..
I am a big fan of Jonathan Rauch and cannot think of a better person to contribute significantly to a journal upholding and extolling the virtues of philosophical liberalism, but this is where he and I will have to agree to disagree.
I share Rauch's concern over Trump's ability to corrupt and destroy our institutions from the inside, and that the media cannot operate in such a subversion, and so when they do recognize fault, I am relieved to see it. My suspicion from watching media closely, however, is that much of this corrective behavior would not manifest without a great deal of public scrutiny and demand for correction, which is oftentimes ignored or reduced to stealth editing. The trouble isn't an inability to course-correct, it is an infidelity to basic tenets of journalism—the same ones in which Rauch himself was trained and rightly believes in—are ignored and instead treated as a necessary casualty to furthering a mostly Manichaean narrative that goes beyond (and in some cases pre-dates) any reaction to Trumpian tactics. This isn't to downplay Trump's (imho) enormous wrongdoing, but even if you take Trump out of the equation, you get the same stifling groupthink which these outlets have helped to go fully mainstream.
To simply give the media a chocolate chip cookie and an "attaboy" for correcting themselves is to miss a larger, more industry-wide lacking in fitness for purpose that was already happening. The thing I feel Rauch doesn't see clearly is that Trump is the (regrettable and enormously damaging) reaction to the culture of illiberalism that preceded him, and the MSM's counter-reaction to him was to lean into it rather than to learn from it.
Well said. The Trump presidency was a stress test for American mainstream media and American mainstream media clearly failed.
It's not just that the mainstream media were overly gullible, it's that social media gatekeepers piled on and blocked posts on the topic, making it seem even more underground and suspicious and conspiracy-theory-ish. Real scientists posting on this topic were blocked by the powers-that-be at Twitter and Facebook. This is not just 'free-press-business-as-usual'.
Yes. And to this point I would argue that the big tech censorship of the lab leak hyposthesis was a MAJOR part of the lab leak story that the media needed to cover but simply ignored for obvious partisan reasons. That is itself a failure within the failure. And it's a sad irony becasue the 10 years ago internet is what put the media under pressure--so if the media had stood up to big tech when it counted most that could have been the low water mark. Instead they blew a huge opportunity to win back their audience. Censorship of all kinds by big tech continues to be a huge, complex and mind blowingly difficult issue--and therefore a huge story(!)--and the media continues to fail the country by essentially pretending there's really no story there beyond the alleged need to remove and ban misinformation from the hard right. In fact "free speech" and "what to do with the internet" appear to have intextricably merged into one problem that is probably the most important story of our day: this story effects all of us and the media needs to report the issue instead of supporting this monoloithic approach of just fighting the right at all costs. A solid first step would be to stop explicitly or implicitly blaming all institutional failures on Trump supporters.
This piece addresses a straw man issue(Trumps straw man issue) and rebuts nothing in the way of serious media criticism. The near-complete collapse of the mainstream media is chronicled perfectly well by Bari Weisse and many others so it is neither helpful or necessary to invoke Trump with so many superior critics to choose from. If Rauch seeks to convince us that the system is working perhaps he can explain why we should not be utterly appalled by (i) the lack of serious in depth reporting over what took place at Evergreen State with the ostracising of Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying from that community (ii) the utterly disgraceful and shallow "reporting" of the riots and unrest in Portland where the mayor obviously enjoys the support of sympathetic media staffers almost everywhere (iii) the "nothing to see here" non-reporting of the rise of cancel culture and cencoriousness in our educational institutions and beyond. Any so called free press that is unable to hold the line against--of all things-- facebook and twitter mobs is just simply not working for democracy.
And if I may be allowed one related point: Apoorva Mandavilli, who wrote “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
I am the absolute last person to want someone fired over a tweet, a pernicious statement or even obvious bigotry, but how does a person like that have a job in *journalism*?!
They have a job in "activist journalism", and with that job description, she's more than qualified. I just ignore that kind of nonsense, and listen to sources I trust.
This is absolute, complete garbage.
Rauch fails to acknowledge that the purpose of the suppression of the lab leak story was INHERENTLY political - to prevent the Trump Administration from being able to effectively blame China and create a story that was counter to the story the corporate media was pushing: That Trump was single-handedly responsible for every Covid death in the US, and the crashing of the economy, due to personal malfeasance and his racist, xenophobia. The goal was to defeat him in the election using this narrative. It clearly worked, or at least significantly contributed to the outcome of the election.
Trump made lots of mistakes, and clearly, his early efforts to downplay the pandemic were rooted in his political self-interest and were, of course, outrageous. However, the media's clear burying of this story was not just a mistake, it was first and foremost a political act. The correct approach would have been to pull on the threads of the story and get the facts out no matter where they led, independently, and not just fall in line for political expediency. Never mind the fact that the latest reversal is likely due to a Chinese scientist defecting and providing the truth about the situation - a truth that the Biden administration is likely suppressing further to prevent a crisis with China, and derail his attempts to become Lyndon Delano Roosevelt...
We should not be congratulating the media on getting it right once the political stakes were lowered, and a friendly administration was installed, in part, due to their participation in a narrative that helped install Biden.
Rauch is a dishonest hack, and should be ignored.
I essentially agree with everything else you said, but I think it's impossible to read Kindly Inquisitors or the Constitution of Knowledge and credibly call him a "dishonest hack", assuming you think liberalism is a thing worth conserving. Rauch is one of our top minds, who is also capable of having a bad take, which I think this is. I posted my own criticism of this article, in case you think I'm just gainsaying.
I know I was being pretty strong by calling him a hack...but to me - for a guy who is supposedly throwing around some level of "dedication to the truth", the only way I can make sense of it is that it's willful obfuscation to help the leftist media save face.
If you agree with my criticisms, and this guy is the real deal, how can he come to the conclusion that he did other than because he prefers on explanation politically over the other? Oversight? Lack of rigor? I can't find a reason that makes sense to me, other than he wants to protect the tactics, and/or his relationships with media people who are playing that game.
I share your incredulity 100%, and you may be right. It is as though he wants to afford Journalism™, which is his own professional ecosystem, an indulgence. In a sense, Rauch's own one-sided reaction follows on from his own thesis that the subversion by Trump caused a once-stable, virtuous system to operate in panic mode, that it's 100% Trump's responsibility and no further questions, your honor. There is the mention of Zaid Jilani's quote, which I tend to side with, but it doesn't lead anywhere in the article to any sort of media self-awareness... or indeed his own.
All I'm saying is I can't write off somebody who is 99% making a great deal of sense, but has a blind spot that makes none at all, particularly as it concerns the dysfunction of a major sense-making apparatus. You may want to ascribe to it incompetence or a corrupt motive, which is understandable, but I think it might just be good old TDS, which hopefully will heal over time. I wish I had a better idea than that, but I have to accept that his is a view I am having great difficulty being persuaded of, and that's okay. Despite what I know to be his soundness, Rauch's article does not deserve its own indulgence, which is why you and I are both moaning about it here. The civil exchange is much appreciated, LosPer.
Thanks. Same!
I just have gotten to the point where I don't accept any critique that blames Trump for media incompetence. The media was a player in every element of the Trump matter: they elevated him during the primary for money/clicks and to help make an unqualified, narcissistic, con-man the Republican nominee, thinking he would be easy to beat and destroy the Republican brand. And when Hillary lived up to being a terrible candidate and he beat her, they needed to atone by making him the devil and tearing him down.
I just have no patience for any media apologists. The built him up for self-serving reasons, and then tore him down the same way, but for different reasons. The fact they got all twisted up in becoming activists and missed the story of the century is on them - and media historians like Rauch giving the media a pass "because Trump" doesn't cut it.
Did Trump make honest, fact-based journalism hard for center-left reporters? Yes. Does that mean they get a pass? No. It means you work harder and put your biases aside. If there was no market for fact-based journalism that was Trump-neutral or in any way Trump exculpating, that's on them, too. There's nothing that says good journalism has to make your audience happy: It just has to be thorough, accurate, and fact-based. Kind of what they are trying to do here at Persuasion. I read more from Yascha and Glenn Greenwald more than I ever have these days, because they are more committed to truth than they are to supporting leftist narratives.
Cheers.
Yep, I can't argue with any of that.
I see that other commenters are going into details, so I won't. Alas, this particular column by Mr. Rauch strikes me as weak. If you are new to his writings and disagree with him on this column, don't write him off.
“It is true that healthy journalistic skepticism can cross over into partisan political favoritism, but that is not what happened in this case, because the politician at issue is Donald Trump.”
I disagree. Donald Trump’s mendacity justify extreme skepticism but not outright dismissal before investigating the facts, which is what happened with COVID reporting. Yes, better that they retracted later but so much damage had already been done hoping the most important of which was creating the unalterable impression of miss trust in the media within a large segment of our nations population.
Left on addressed in your article but IMHO equally important- is the delatforming of scientists-which still goes on to this day- on YouTube, Facebook etc. The hubris of these “fact checkers” who believe them selves capable of comprehending much less critiquing and even censoring what their betters are discussing in scientific circles is astonishing beyond words.
You damn with faint praise by applauding media outlets for belatedly refocusing on the crux of the issue after months of knee-jerking an anti-Trump reaction.
If the lab link is total B.S., then why wouldn’t China let in investigators to confirm and remove all doubt?