One of my favorite columnists, Leonard Pitts, Jr., of the Miami Herald, was writing the other day about the blogger who falsely reported that Fox News executive Roger Ailes was about to be indicted. Who was this guy’s source of information? Someone he sat next to at the airport while waiting for his flight. When questioned about the reliability of his information, this blogger responded that, if his story was wrong, “no big deal.”
Here’s what Pitts had to say about that kind of cavalier attitude:
“Those who work in or depend on mainstream media, traditional media, legacy media — choose your preferred synonym for ‘old’ — are frequently and forcefully reminded that technology has changed the rules, broken the model. What was once a monologue is now a dialogue, the gathering and dissemination of news has become a communal activity. We are, goes the mantra, all journalists now. Fine. Wonderful. Whatever.
“But: If we are all journalists, we all ought to be governed by journalism’s most sacred directive. Meaning accuracy. Get the facts straight.
“One encounters little fealty to that directive in surveying the landscape of new media, overrun as it is by true believers for whom accuracy is subordinate to ideology and facts useful only to the degree they can be bent, shaped or outright disregarded in service to that ideology. The result, as many have noted, is a political discourse distinguished by increasing incoherence and intellectual incontinence, an empty shouting match better suited to a fifth-grade schoolyard than to adults analyzing the great issues of the day.”
A political discourse distinguished by increasing incoherence and intellectual incontinence – I love that phrase.
