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>If you don't, you can report on a controversy (like when someone is accused of a crime) but be clear you're describing it without the ability to resolve/shed light on it

Well, I guess there's degrees of lying.

I 100% understand what you're getting at though and I do believe _most_ companies and journalists do practice this... however I've noticed a trend where you'll have a headline or statement that is based on "anonymous sources" or "twitter user says X." Intentionally packing in as much of the claim as possible while minimizing the "source."

One of the most recent examples is from yesterday.

This is the headline VICE News put out yesterday: Elon Musk Spoke to Putin Before Tweeting Ukraine Peace Plan: Report https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake44z/elon-musk-vladimir-pu...

No reasonable person could infer that the entire headline is based off of a claim that has been denied by everyone involved. Musk can weather "negative" headlines like that but I'm more concerned about those that don't have the luxury of shrugging that off.

>And when you do make mistakes, you should have a practice of correcting them and documenting the fact that you did so, so that your audience is about equally likely to encounter the correction as they were the mistaken report.

I want to believe that... but there's certainly enough examples of people having their reputation completely trashed by the media with the truth only coming out years later. News companies have incentives to get views/clicks. I can't imagine "we messed up" is as attractive as "this person is a monster."

I 100% agree that they should make best effort to correct stories.




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