From Columbia Journaiism Review's interview with Glenn Kessler, the recently retired fact checker at the Washington Post. www.cjr.org/the-intervie...
This is an excerpt. Read the rest of it. No paywall.
Replies
-
That certainly explains how unsure the New York Times has been about politics over the last 10 years.
Especially Republican politics. -
My contribution to this genre. I agree with Barron: you have to be really sure. And not all false statements by prominent people are lies.
www.economist.com/books-and-ar...
Why the press should call out politicians when they lie
And why lying isn’t the same as talking nonsense
-
It's sickenimg to see the end of the Washington Post as it was known. Every single article in it now pulls punches, gives excessive difference to lies, or outright praises Trump.
-
When I hear media people say this I wonder if they say the same thing to their children and other people they run into. “Little Glenn allegedly ate too many cookies today.”
-
The refusal to call an obvious lie a lie, gifting endless benefit of the doubt, and sane-washing conveys more information to the reader on the organization’s relationship to the perpetrator than the story. The lack of this rigidity on his opponents fills in the rest.
-
The word "lie" is supposed to be a conversation-stopper.
Conversations are the sharing of reality and experiences between people. Lying breaks that covenant of shared reality.
-
Unfuckingbelievable 😡
-
One of the worst to ever do it.
-
As long as our reps keep everything "just POLITICAL", they ALL can lie & commit crimes that harm us all without accountability, with full immunity & impunity, just as they protect each other to protect themselves
All are guilty. That's why only the brazen like T without a conscience will say it
-
Our inability to call a spade a spade is the reason we're in the mess in the first place.
-
📌
-
This seems to be the current media approach even in the face of the hundreds of outright lies Trump and his cabinet try to disinform us with everyday.
-
I don't know if there is a more emblematic anecdote for Glenn's entire project at the post than that he refused to use the word "lie" while writing a column meant for separating truth from fiction out of respect for a conversation that his boss says did not happen.
-
IMO the press’ consistent reluctance to use“lie” about Trump is part of what got us here.
Journalists like to display their literary erudition by using polysyllables. I get it; me too. But those blunt monosyllables convey meaning much more directly & effectively, “conversation stoppers” or not.
-
"He departs at a time when the media’s ability to challenge falsehoods uttered by those in power has never been weaker."
-
Thanks
-
Sad to see. Lies are a normal word. By avoiding use of it, journalists are just deluding both themselves & their readers. I find it depressingly cowardly how media keep refusing to use it. Propaganda, fascism, far-right, lobbygroups, grifters, lies, etc we need to say the words for honest reporting.
