I believe the top publications today (NYT, Economist, WSJ,...) are far better than they ever used to be. There was an article recently (no link because I'm on

I believe the top publications today (NYT, Economist, WSJ,...) are far better than they ever used to be. There was an article recently (no link because I'm on mobile, sorry) showing some of the factual errors that were published regarding Watergate at the time. None of the minor mistakes made by the major outlets with regard to the current Trump/Russia affair gets even close. The practice of prominently correcting errors when they are found has also markedly improved. The internet is obviously a far better medium than print for corrections, as well. It seems that people are expecting some sort of idealised "neutrality" from journalism today that is simply impossible. Journalism starts being subjective when decisions are made on what stories to cover. They have never been "phonebooks", simply listing facts, and journalists have always been more than typists: they are expected to call a spade a spade when they see it. There's also a lot of criticism of "anonymous sources". If you're feeling nostalgic, I shall remind you that all of Watergate was build on an anonymous source. People seem to think of "anonymous sources" as a license for journalists to just invent facts. But that's completely wrong: the journalist's reputation is on the line every time they use such sources. If they are ever shown to have invented such a source, they would lose their job immediately. (As an exercise: read article from a year ago and see how many of those sources proved to be accurate). The right measure for journalism is a sort of "good faith": there were untold numbers of editorials calling Trump out for claiming credit for the stock market's rise over the last year. And, sure enough, when the markets crashed last week, quality publications made a point of mentioning that Trump was just as irrelevant for the crash as he was for the rally before.