A Quote by James Taranto
'Fact checking' is opinion journalism pretending to be some sort of heightened objectivity.
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When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways?
[Some outlets] shouldn't even call themselves news providers; they're just entertainment gossip without any sort of accountability or fact-checking.
The thing is, even if you're playing sort of a heightened character and playing inside sort of a heightened reality, you can still apply your own truths to those characters.
You're all Buddhas, pretending not to be. You're all the Christ, pretending not to be. You're all Atman, pretending not to be. You're all love, pretending not to be. You're all one, pretending not to be. You're all Gurus, pretending not to be. You're all God, pretending not to be. When you're ready to stop pretending, then you're ready to just be the real you. That's your home.
In terms of the rise of social media and the kind of discourse that it encourages, the kind of pointed attitude it encourages, in terms of the number of venues like our conversation here where reporters who are not technically opinion columnists are giving analysis that's invariably gonna edge into opinion. I think our journalism is getting much more almost European in terms of that, that ideal of objectivity exiting it.
I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever... Not that journalism is always wonderful - it's not - but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.
A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.
Everyone has a right to an opinion. I can arrive in England and express my opinion. If criticism were ferocious and without intellectual objectivity they should show me the way to their airport. It is important to have an opinion and not be afraid to express it, knowing there will be criticism.
I don't think it is just in the world of politics. The lack of civility in society as a whole, some of it, I believe, is very much fueled by social media and frankly, it's fueled by the fact that journalism is not journalism any more.
Objectivity and again objectivity, and expression: no hindside-before-ness, no straddled adjectives (as "addled mosses dank"), no Tennysonianness of speech; nothing-nothing that you couldn't, in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.
I'm not in the news business and won't tell people how to do their job. I'd like to restore trust in the news business, though, and feel that restoring fact-checking will really help. News business realities mean that such fact-checking has to be practical, it has to be fast and cheap.
[Eugene] O'Neill made a living, certainly, at least. But each of these forms have sort of died the death in turn, and it's a simple fact of that universe that talent then migrates away from these forms, and then the amateurs get in, like lunatics in the ruins, sort of pretending to be artists. If you're ambitious enough to want to be a writer to begin with, you want to be a writer in some circumstances where there are rewards, where there's notice, where you don't have to be a teacher, and where you're frankly not nuts for wasting your time.
The cable news channels have cleverly seized on the creed of objectivity and redefined it in populist terms. They attack news based on verifiable fact for its liberal bias, for, in essence, failing to be objective, and promise a return to genuine objectivity.
There was actually some serious time in front of the mirror, checking yourself out, checking out your shirt, checking out your pants.Combing that hair. Really putting some thought and effort behind it and it's astounding how terrible I used to make myself look. Still to this day I don't really know how to dress myself.
When you use the language of 'fact checking' to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's 'Water Lilies.' That's not what water lilies look like; that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece.
We do live in a time where there are fake web sites peddling mistruths out or sites that use hyperbole and don't put things in context. There's a range of ways that real journalism has been mashed up with things that aren't journalism... like opinion or that's sensationalistic in some ways. It is really noisy out there. You have to think of ways to cut though the noise.
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