https://alexandraerin.substack.com/p/context-clues-in-the-era-of-metoo
"We heard so many times during the too-long reign of Donald Trump that it
wasn’t the business of straight news reporters to tell us who was lying, they
only reported who said what and trusted us to recognize the obvious, absurd,
and odious lies for what they were. “We don’t make the news and we don’t tell
people what to think, we just report what happened.” is the typical refrain,
along with “We can do more than lay out the facts and trust that readers will
arrive at the obvious conclusion.”
But to the extent that their audience trusts them to tell them what happened,
it is a problem when they will not report that something is absurd or obviously
false, or will not draw the natural inference or obvious conclusion.
Sure, to a trained journalist, the distinction between “This is what happened.”
and “This is what a friend of the accused says happened.” is obvious and
important.
But the average news consumer is not a trained journalist, and is counting on
the people who are trained journalists to report all the news is news, all the
news that’s fit to print, and so if the only account of events presented comes
from one source, that’s a sign that this source was found credible.
If accounts by other people who were present and might have thoughts about what
happened aren’t presented as news, then it can be inferred — in fact, basically
must be informed by any reader who trusts the journalist to be honest with them
— that those accounts either do not differ meaningfully from the one presented,
or were not found credible enough to be printed."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
