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My strong impression over the last couple of decades is for journalists to take many things at face value and defer to "experts" without digging into things lik

My strong impression over the last couple of decades is for journalists to take many things at face value and defer to "experts" without digging into things like potential conflicts of interests or motives etc. So if you have a set of experts saying "Epstein killed himself," even if those experts have conflicts of interest and/or were appointed by those with CoI, a lot of journalists will defer. I think a similar phenomenon was in play with the lab leak hypothesis, various things related to Erdogan in Turkey, Russian assassinations in the UK, reporting over the Mueller Report, and a host of other things. I don't think all journalists are like this, and I understand where they're coming from, but increasingly reading between the lines and/or interpreting stated conclusions in the context of human motives seems lost on a lot of journalists and/or journalism outlets. It leads to these weird situations where something is very obviously off about a situation but you can't get someone to say something on the record, so things are just shrugged off, taken at face value, and you're led to doubt your own logic. Often but not always eventually journalists can get someone to say something on the record, and then it's treated like some big revelation. Journalists getting intelligence experts to acknowledge "no it's not really likely someone could kill themselves and then afterwards stuff themselves into a black body bag and zip it up." Then everyone is like "oh ok I wasn't losing my sanity" and there's some correction. But sometimes it's just left to historians to pick up the threads. I'm not saying anything about Epstein or anything in particular, and there's a need to avoid going down conspiracy rabbit holes. But I wish there was more nuance in coverage sometimes, to acknowledge that something weird or shady is going on while acknowledging there's no evidence for anything in particular.

golemotron 5y ago
> My strong impression over the last couple of decades is for journalists to take many things at face value and defer to "experts" without digging into things like potential conflicts of interests or motives etc. A lot of it is the fact that there's no money in journalism, never mind investigative journalism. It's cheaper to have people write stories based on their imaginations or their readings of Twitter.
wyldfire 5y ago
> So if you have a set of experts saying "Epstein killed himself," even if those experts have conflicts of interest and/or were appointed by those with CoI, a lot of journalists will defer. Journalists don't make claims that they can't back up. On net, I think this is for the best. Journalists upholding this code is what gives us useful, credible news. > But I wish there was more nuance in coverage sometimes, to acknowledge that something weird or shady is going on while acknowledging there's no evidence for anything in particular. I think conventional reporting on Epstein's death features all the anomalies but stopped making claims when the trail of evidence ran cold. If you can't provide any evidence that the guard was paid to look the other way, that's sadly where the story ends. However, a really cool and interesting phenomenon is what happens to people at interesting stages of their lives. People who have kept secrets sometimes feel shame or pity when they realize they're dying or when they have children. So we could end up with some surprising revelations in the century to come.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  >Journalists don't make claims that they can't back up. From babies pulled from incubators to WMD in Iraq to Manafort meeting with Assange in the London Embassy to an infinite number of other provable falsehoods, if history has taught us anything, its that journalists routinely make claims they can't back up.
  - JimTheMan 5y ago
    I completely agree with you. What a ridiculously naive statement to make.
- mpol 5y ago
  I would really hope there are better journalists then the ones you describe here. If things are fishy and they smell, but you don't have proof, why not just say that? It's not that hard. There used to be a time when journalists had more honor, some might still have.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
If Chomsky [1] is to be believed, the media is designed to keep the masses outraged and fighting amongst themselves while keeping those in power out of the spotlight. If the news gets to inconvenient for those in power it gets "corrected" by the media complex. [1] https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M

golemotron 5y ago

> My strong impression over the last couple of decades is for journalists to take many things at face value and defer to "experts" without digging into things like potential conflicts of interests or motives etc. A lot of it is the fact that there's no money in journalism, never mind investigative journalism. It's cheaper to have people write stories based on their imaginations or their readings of Twitter.

wyldfire 5y ago

> So if you have a set of experts saying "Epstein killed himself," even if those experts have conflicts of interest and/or were appointed by those with CoI, a lot of journalists will defer. Journalists don't make claims that they can't back up. On net, I think this is for the best. Journalists upholding this code is what gives us useful, credible news. > But I wish there was more nuance in coverage sometimes, to acknowledge that something weird or shady is going on while acknowledging there's no evidence for anything in particular. I think conventional reporting on Epstein's death features all the anomalies but stopped making claims when the trail of evidence ran cold. If you can't provide any evidence that the guard was paid to look the other way, that's sadly where the story ends. However, a really cool and interesting phenomenon is what happens to people at interesting stages of their lives. People who have kept secrets sometimes feel shame or pity when they realize they're dying or when they have children. So we could end up with some surprising revelations in the century to come.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>Journalists don't make claims that they can't back up. From babies pulled from incubators to WMD in Iraq to Manafort meeting with Assange in the London Embassy to an infinite number of other provable falsehoods, if history has taught us anything, its that journalists routinely make claims they can't back up.
- JimTheMan 5y ago
  I completely agree with you. What a ridiculously naive statement to make.
mpol 5y ago
I would really hope there are better journalists then the ones you describe here. If things are fishy and they smell, but you don't have proof, why not just say that? It's not that hard. There used to be a time when journalists had more honor, some might still have.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

If Chomsky [1] is to be believed, the media is designed to keep the masses outraged and fighting amongst themselves while keeping those in power out of the spotlight. If the news gets to inconvenient for those in power it gets "corrected" by the media complex. [1] https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M