Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader, I think my comment may have come off wrong. I'm not suggesting that the current tone in US news is a clear improvement, I'm just rejecting the claim that with this election we're in an unprecedented death-of-news situation.
The state of most media in the US is deplorable. 'Fake news' sites aside, sources have been abandoned for access, and optimizing cost per click metrics has been interpreted as a reason to run unverified nonsense and press releases under the guise of actual journalism.
That's even without the complete failures of domain knowledge, context, and objectivity; the NYT recently left my jaw on the floor with a piece about how US involvement in Honduras is making "the most dangerous place in the world" safer. The legacy of US coups there, and CIA backing of brutal paramilitaries, was not mentioned even once - an unfamiliar reader was left to believe that the country was hellish by its own efforts, and saved by American intervention. Passing that sort of myopia off as a feature story is an ugly reminder of just how bad "good" journalism gets.
Good journalism still exists, with some effort. There are sites like The Intercept which report thoroughly and carefully, and which approach stories with a clear and predictable viewpoint - something I greatly prefer to the mock-neutral tone many groups use to bury the inescapable ideological choices of reporting.
If we're lucky, Reuters just means they're going to refuse a personal stake in covering US political news. I wouldn't mind a movement towards a more distant, anthropological style of coverage. If Trump's 'opponents' line reminds reporters that good journalism is adversarial to power, we might see some of the old style come back.
"Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader,"
My apologies for lack of clarity. Meant in general.
I often wish that was two separate words in the common English. ("Y'all" is actually the correct word, but is dialect, so people who don't know that dialect may not understand its nuances correctly.)
Depending on whether that 'you' is actually me or a general reader, I think my comment may have come off wrong. I'm not suggesting that the current tone in US news is a clear improvement, I'm just rejecting the claim that with this election we're in an unprecedented death-of-news situation.
The state of most media in the US is deplorable. 'Fake news' sites aside, sources have been abandoned for access, and optimizing cost per click metrics has been interpreted as a reason to run unverified nonsense and press releases under the guise of actual journalism.
That's even without the complete failures of domain knowledge, context, and objectivity; the NYT recently left my jaw on the floor with a piece about how US involvement in Honduras is making "the most dangerous place in the world" safer. The legacy of US coups there, and CIA backing of brutal paramilitaries, was not mentioned even once - an unfamiliar reader was left to believe that the country was hellish by its own efforts, and saved by American intervention. Passing that sort of myopia off as a feature story is an ugly reminder of just how bad "good" journalism gets.
Good journalism still exists, with some effort. There are sites like The Intercept which report thoroughly and carefully, and which approach stories with a clear and predictable viewpoint - something I greatly prefer to the mock-neutral tone many groups use to bury the inescapable ideological choices of reporting.
If we're lucky, Reuters just means they're going to refuse a personal stake in covering US political news. I wouldn't mind a movement towards a more distant, anthropological style of coverage. If Trump's 'opponents' line reminds reporters that good journalism is adversarial to power, we might see some of the old style come back.