Where is the truth?

Originally shared by Tony Lower-Basch

Where is the truth?

In my youth I was confronted with a demand from a teacher at a summer program: Think deeply of simple things. He asked questions like "Are there any whole numbers between zero and one? You say no? How do you know that? Prove it to me, from first principles, and show your work." He changed, if not the events of my life itself, certainly everything about how I have processed those events. He made me ready to nod my head when I saw later formulations, like "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?" He made me treasure the truth, as a person will always treasure the things that can only be achieved through hard, draining, effort.

Some folks have, since the start of the year, strongly questioned a hypothesis that I relied upon: The idea that there is truth in public discourse and that some outlets of the news media have a pattern of doing a good job of pursuing it and presenting it (corrolary: other outlets do not do as good a job, therefore there is a meaningful distinction between outlets).

I don't know what the intention of those folks was when they confronted me, but I know how I heard it in my head (and in whose voice): "Well, young man ... how do you know that? That will be exercise 13 for tonight's worksheet, I think ... prove or disprove your claim, and salvage if possible." And I know only one response to that ... do the work.

The work has been (and remains) daunting: A cross-outlet correlation where I compare how they cover the same story, down to the level of word-choice and how (and when) they attribute and source their information. You can see it at: https://plus.google.com/collection/kS8roB . As the White House doubles down on the claim that some outlets are "fake news" while others are reliable, it seems an opportune time to give a TL;DR summary of the mass of my findings:

(1) The New York Times does the country proud as the nation's News of Record. Gripe all you want about their Opinion pages (and man do folks there get heated and biased), but their journalistic coverage sets the standard for impartiality and completeness.
(2) The Washington Post is also really darn good, but you occasionally have to wade through their raw smugness of tone. I imagine them as Lois Lane, cocksure and full of confidence because they know they're good.
(3) CNN gets it right a lot of the time, but once you start looking longitudinally you can all but see that there are currents there pulling them toward sensationalism. All my love to the folks trying to keep an even keel in that environment.
(4) Oh my God, Daily Mail, you are like journalism's well-meaning uncle who sometimes shoots his mouth off while drunk. I wouldn't have you as my sole news source, but you've brought the surprised laugh I needed to lighten my day sometimes. Who else would run a headline of "Dylann Roof can join his idol Adolf Hitler in hell"?
(5) Guardian: I know. You make it look easy. Beats the heck out of me how good you are for local coverage, but the smug classiness with which you cover US politics is hilarious.
(6) Fox: Try harder, people! You get it right a lot ... really, a lot, and I'm proud. But 90% of the time isn't 99%. I don't know if it's bad actors in your staff, or editorial shenanigans, but as much as I want to I can't suggest that people rely on you. Going off the rails into misinformation one time out of ten is just a sad act of disrespect for the hard work that went into the other nine articles.

And then there's the outlet that doesn't even get the honor of being in the bullet point listing with the others. Folks, Breitbart is a propaganda rag, operating straight out of the Orwellian Ministry of Information's playbook. I do not say this lightly: I say it because I've done the work, given them a fair and even chance to show me their character in news event after news event, and they have pretty universally shown that character to be of the lowest, most disdainful of the truth, readiest to lie and support known lies. If you want to ask "What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?", I refer you to the link above. I've done the work.