White terrorist kills muslims with car

[Dill]

(06-24-2017, 02:10 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: And know you're doing it again.  Wanting honest, fact based, opinion free reporting is not associated with any news channel, paper or organization.

As any lawyer will tell you, deliberately omitting a pertinent fact is the same as lying.  You don't mind lying from journalists, I do.  I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. 

Back to the issue of journalistic standards--To restate my point: "opinion free" reporting is not possible. You just pointed out that "deliberately omitting a pertinent fact us lying." This is your recognition that missing facts can alter the truth value and completeness of any report. But the same can hold true of any omitted fact, even if it is not DELIBERATELY omitted.

 Nowhere are professional reporters offered a set of already certified "pertinent facts" which have somehow selected themselves, and which reporters may then just jot down without selection or judgment or some sense personal/social/professional priorities. These priorities change over time and from place to place and according to subject addressed. These priorities may not matter much when a reporter is reporting on a local high school basketball game, but they matter a great deal when reporters are describing events like the Fishbury Park incident which started this thread, or the recent murder of the young Muslim woman in Virginia.

Professional journalists discuss this problem all the time. They take courses on the subject in journalism school.  One goal of critical media literacy is to get people to understand how, in EVERY "fact-based" report, "pertinent facts" have been filtered through reporters and editors according to a range of priorities and necessities, from lack of space on a page to regional foci to national or political bias. Recognizing this doesn't make all journalists "liars." As best they can, good, honest journalists present what readers need to know to be informed. To do that, the journalist must already have some ideal of what readers need to know, some sense of social priorities. Without such priorities--which are values, not facts--it would not be possible to determine what facts were pertinent.

So do you agree with all, part or none of this argument?  If you agree, say so and we can move on to what the implications of this view are for journalism in a liberal democracy. If you don't agree, then identify a premise or two you think are false and explain why you think they are false. That will be more effective than sweeping dismissal.