>Someone really should drill this into the head of every reporter and journalism student. Talking points put forward by political campaigns and special interest groups, if they are untrue or deliberately misleading, should not be given air time. Simply parroting such false statements does a grave disservice to society.
It's more the fault of the lead editors than the reporters. They're the ones who put the time pressure on (which means fact checking is often impractical) and they're the ones who deliberately introduce editorial slants.
Not necessarily. Editorial stances are as often driven by the desires of the proprietor as they are the readership. E.g. there were newspapers recently in the UK that took strong editorial stances against a particular political leader in spite of the fact that the majority of their readers preferred him. The proprietors had an agenda and they risked (and ultimately lost) subscribers to push it.
Hyperbole and sensationalism isn't driven solely by demand either, it's also driven by risk aversion. There's a high demand for thoughtful, well researched journalism, but the market demand often isn't fulfilled because that kind of journalism involves high up front investment and is risky whereas human interest stories and cats are cheap to churn out and their effect is consistent.
It's more the fault of the lead editors than the reporters. They're the ones who put the time pressure on (which means fact checking is often impractical) and they're the ones who deliberately introduce editorial slants.