A fascinating and thoughtful analysis as always, Justin. You argue convincingly for the media's over-reliance on fact-checking in the Trump era and for your case that public trust in news media is eroding as a result. Let's not beat up on journalists too.much, though. They had not dealt with such a compulsive liar in such a high office b…
A fascinating and thoughtful analysis as always, Justin. You argue convincingly for the media's over-reliance on fact-checking in the Trump era and for your case that public trust in news media is eroding as a result. Let's not beat up on journalists too.much, though. They had not dealt with such a compulsive liar in such a high office before, and fact-checking jn real time seemed like the best response. What may be a better, though admittedly longer-term project, is to teach people from primary grades on how to spot disinformation and misinformation, to separate facts from conjecture and lies, to question the source of the falsehoods and the motivation behind them. To that end, I recommend the work of Dr. John Cook of the Centre for Behavioral Change at the University of Melbourne and his app, Cranky Uncle. See crankyuncle.com. and no, I didn't make this up! However, even if constant fact-checking isn't the way to go, we do need journalists to keep exposing public figures who constantly use cherry-picking and logical fallacies (*cough* Pierre Polievre *cough*) to fire up their base. Don't call it fact-checking, fine. But keep investigative journalism alive. We need it more than ever.
A fascinating and thoughtful analysis as always, Justin. You argue convincingly for the media's over-reliance on fact-checking in the Trump era and for your case that public trust in news media is eroding as a result. Let's not beat up on journalists too.much, though. They had not dealt with such a compulsive liar in such a high office before, and fact-checking jn real time seemed like the best response. What may be a better, though admittedly longer-term project, is to teach people from primary grades on how to spot disinformation and misinformation, to separate facts from conjecture and lies, to question the source of the falsehoods and the motivation behind them. To that end, I recommend the work of Dr. John Cook of the Centre for Behavioral Change at the University of Melbourne and his app, Cranky Uncle. See crankyuncle.com. and no, I didn't make this up! However, even if constant fact-checking isn't the way to go, we do need journalists to keep exposing public figures who constantly use cherry-picking and logical fallacies (*cough* Pierre Polievre *cough*) to fire up their base. Don't call it fact-checking, fine. But keep investigative journalism alive. We need it more than ever.