As Donald Trump won the election last year, one of the early scapegoats for his improbable victory was the invented threat of “Fake News,” which ended up being defined to mean “news outlets that challenge leftist ideology.”
It seems now that Washington Post writer Alyssa Rosenberg thinks that if she can’t beat them, she should join them.
Writers don’t write headlines, but the headline attached to her piece is pretty damning: “It’s time for journalists to stop pretending ‘objective’ means ‘mindless’.” But her own writing corresponds with the headline. Observe:
One outcome of the evil genius of insisting that the proper role of media is merely to produce limp stenography is bad journalism that provides no context or clarity about, say, the established facts on an issue or whether a politician is lying or merely ignorant and indifferent enough not to care about getting the facts right.
Just as dissenting opinion was defined as “Fake News,” Rosenberg is defining a “just the facts” approach to the news, as “limp stenography.” She thinks it’s the role of news outlets to take an adversarial position with the Donald Trump administration.
If Donald Trump and his underlings lie (and they will), then that can be exposed without activism. “Limp stenography” that sticks to the truth, will expose the truth. If that’s not enough, then it’s obvious truth isn’t the real agenda here.
RedState writer Patterico has called for draining the media swamp, and it’s easy to see why. When writers for major media outlets want to reject facts and substitute their own biases, that’s a swamp that needs draining.
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