an ecosystem uniquely susceptible to fraud—where publications with prestigious names publish rickety journalism under their brands, where fact-checkers have been axed and editors are overworked, where technology has made falsifying pitches and entire articles trivially easy, and where decades of devaluing journalism as simply more “content” have... See more

mean anything at all. On the front page of the gray old Times, I’m liable to encounter a chatty article about frying with propane gas. CNN lavished hours of airtime on a runaway bride. The magisterial tones of Walter Cronkite, America’s rich uncle, are lost to history, replaced by the ex-cheerleader mom style of Katie Couric. One reason the notion

... See more

It is, in fact, objectivity’s self-appointed defenders themselves who have led its erosion. Rather than emphasize a fair reporting process , they focused obsessively on the appearanceand performanceof supposed personal objectivity, wielding the term to police personal expression—not journalistic work—in both public and private contexts. Their north... See more