Port: When journalists get things this spectacularly wrong, it hurts us all
MINOT, N.D. — If we’re being honest, much of the consternation about “the media” among the American public is driven by people who consider “journalism” to be an exercise in telling people what they want to hear.
That’s the cable news business model, as has been revealed in Dominion Voting System’s ongoing lawsuit against Fox News, where evidence disclosures and depositions have illustrated that everyone from on-hair hosts to high-ranking executives knew their “news” enterprise reported falsehoods for the sake of ratings.
Cable news tends to be popular with the public — or, at least, the political factions each respective news channel targets — because they pander. They offer news-adjacent performances, not journalism.
Entertainment is about pleasing an audience. Journalism, when it’s done right, when it’s predicated on the truth, often leaves audiences disconcerted.
As years of public polls illustrate , this isn’t the sort of thing that wins you any popularity contests.
