The suicide of American journalism, and the “objective” ideal I grew up with as a young reporter, continues apace, as I noted in this space yesterday and the IBD website mentions today:
Media Malfeasance: In less than two weeks, bombshell stories of a vicious gang rape and a millionaire teen investor were exposed as frauds that never would have made it into print but for gross negligence and liberal bias.
Over the weekend, Jessica Pressler, a “star reporter” at New York magazine, told the story of an underage teen who’d already made $72 million trading stocks on his lunch break. It was part of a series on why people should love the city. The story spread like wildfire, showing up in the New York Post, Marketwatch, the New York Daily News, Fox News and others.
Too good to check, except perfunctorily. The idea that a high school kid (bonus points for his name: Mohammed Islam) could beat the market was irresistible, given the feel-good, Narrative-framing tendencies of the magazine’s writers and editors.
Meanwhile, the University of Virginia gang rape story continues to unravel, exposing new depths of laziness, recklessness and bias at Rolling Stone.
It’s now clear that there were so many holes in “Jackie’s” rape claims that anyone who’d done the minimum of unbiased reporting would have dismissed her as not credible and moved on. But Jackie’s story supported the current liberal belief that sexual assaults are rampant on college campuses. So why doubt her?
Why indeed? There’s a reason that, back in the day, every revolution began be seizing the newspapers and radio stations. The Left understands, far more than the Right, that propaganda is everything — and if it has to kill American journalism to make its points, then so be it.
Over at Sultan Knish, Daniel Greenfield has some typically perceptive thoughts on “Life in Post-Truth America.” Well worth a read.
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