Originally Posted by
Chris
One more comment on "when the
high school boys were defamed by journalists with the accusation that they mocked an elderly Native American who was trying to calm a confrontation with a radical group of anti-white, anti-Semitic racists."
Infamous Scribblers: Virtue Signalers on the Warpath
Well, half-right. The journalists part is wrong. I don't remember when social media stories became fodder for actual news coverage. But it's a very bad trend. Social media aren't held to journalistic standards, & so when news media quote stories from there, they have an obligation to check to make sure that the story is accurate. Certainly the Founding Fathers would not have carved out a special place for news media in the founding document of the republic, if they had thought that news would degenerate to mere hearsay.
If they don't do the legwork, the news media will fall flat on their collective face time after time. @ that rate, in a very short time, those media will have earned the ridicule they should fear. So yah, there may be some attempt to signal virtue there, accounting for some of the bad reporting that went on in this story. I count it more as sheer sloth, ineptitude, & expecting someone else (who?) to do the actual work of reporting.
The media that ran with the compelling images instead of asking hard questions need to ask themselves hard questions: Why are they in the news business @ all, if they can't be relied upon to get the story right the first time? & why should the public pay them any mind if they don't mend their ways? & the fearsome question: Why would any advertiser wish to be associated with such a poor product?