4 ms·

I don't really understand your logic. I get that there's (sometimes) a social contract that journalists should produce factual work. However, I don't think that

I don't really understand your logic. I get that there's (sometimes) a social contract that journalists should produce factual work. However, I don't think that facts organize themselves into stories, without a degree of fabrication. Whether that fabrication is just a matter of ordering, emphasis, spin - or even elements made from new cloth seems a bit arbitrary to me.

justtopost 8y ago
Maybe you need to reconsider your personal sense of ethics. This strikes me as a staunchly immoral, or at least amoral, view.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  As I see it, factual questions are inherently amoral. My moral position would be that nobody should read the news. I suspect this would vastly improve public understanding of current events.
danso 8y ago
Maybe you’re understanding “fabrication” for its meaning in manufacturing — e.g. fabricating a computer chip. In the journalism context, “fabrication” is used to mean, “making up facts/falsehoods”. I do agree that the way someone can spin a story can be just as misleading and dishonest and wholesale making up facts. The practical matter is that it’s much easier to know that someone made up certain facts maliciously. Whereas whether something is maliciously spun vs. “telling it as it is” is harder to define. But if a journalist is capable of malice in the former, they most certainly do the latter.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  I'm broadly skeptical of the possibility, even given a great deal of talent and integrity, of accurately and objectively reporting the events of a given day with the paucity of lead time that journalists work with. Historians take years to develop a balanced understanding of a given event. Journalists must do so in twenty minutes, after a morning coffee. When you compound that with journalist's traditional role as the mouthpieces of various political and state organs, their own personal biases, career interests, and organized media management strategies - well, it's really a testament to the good faith that reporters bring to the table that the news cycle is even within spitting distance of the facts. I don't think malice is the problem. I think the news, as an institution, was never intended to accurately report the events, is structurally incapable of doing so, and so, shouldn't be expected to. Hysterics over a reporter 'making stuff up' is more a defensive thing on the part of journalists, since the foundational conceit of the whole profession, and its defining contradiction, is between their obvious political role, and their equally obvious reliance on being perceived as fact-oriented. I mean, this is Der Spiegel. It's hardly great journalism. Outsiders shouldn't take this kind of hand-wringing too seriously.

justtopost 8y ago

Maybe you need to reconsider your personal sense of ethics. This strikes me as a staunchly immoral, or at least amoral, view.

pasabagi 8y ago
As I see it, factual questions are inherently amoral. My moral position would be that nobody should read the news. I suspect this would vastly improve public understanding of current events.

danso 8y ago

Maybe you’re understanding “fabrication” for its meaning in manufacturing — e.g. fabricating a computer chip. In the journalism context, “fabrication” is used to mean, “making up facts/falsehoods”. I do agree that the way someone can spin a story can be just as misleading and dishonest and wholesale making up facts. The practical matter is that it’s much easier to know that someone made up certain facts maliciously. Whereas whether something is maliciously spun vs. “telling it as it is” is harder to define. But if a journalist is capable of malice in the former, they most certainly do the latter.

pasabagi 8y ago
I'm broadly skeptical of the possibility, even given a great deal of talent and integrity, of accurately and objectively reporting the events of a given day with the paucity of lead time that journalists work with. Historians take years to develop a balanced understanding of a given event. Journalists must do so in twenty minutes, after a morning coffee. When you compound that with journalist's traditional role as the mouthpieces of various political and state organs, their own personal biases, career interests, and organized media management strategies - well, it's really a testament to the good faith that reporters bring to the table that the news cycle is even within spitting distance of the facts. I don't think malice is the problem. I think the news, as an institution, was never intended to accurately report the events, is structurally incapable of doing so, and so, shouldn't be expected to. Hysterics over a reporter 'making stuff up' is more a defensive thing on the part of journalists, since the foundational conceit of the whole profession, and its defining contradiction, is between their obvious political role, and their equally obvious reliance on being perceived as fact-oriented. I mean, this is Der Spiegel. It's hardly great journalism. Outsiders shouldn't take this kind of hand-wringing too seriously.