j.r. leonard

Imagine a basketball game where the refs told one team "no matter how many fouls you commit we're only gonna call three of them, so we don't look biased." Now imagine this was happening with something way, way, way more important than a basketball game.https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1136632892686249984 …

For this analogy to work, you have to pretend that the media’s role is akin to that of a referee. It’s not. The media are the media, the sideline commentators. They should act accordingly

There's room for commentary, but referee should be a role played by media. Journalists examine competing claims and figure out what's true. It's how we come to a shared understanding of facts. Baquet's "balanced" treatment of asymmetrical phenomenon distorts reality.

There are almost no journalists who are qualified to decide what is true. Their value add isn’t in arbitrating truth. It’s in reporting accurate facts and the necessary context. Just like the sideline commentators aren’t there to make calls. They’re there for analysis

There are a number of problems with this take, the first of which is that the voters, whom our press is entrusted with informing, are not at all comparable to the passive spectators of a sporting event. They (we) are active, vital participants in the process at hand.

There's a reason the press has been designated historically as "the Fourth Estate." They have an important role in the democratic process, as do the public they inform.

But also: to insist the press should be striving for "accuracy," but without seeking to discern "truth," seems like a rather...unwieldy imperative