Great article on the way that the New York Times tried to destroy the truth about the Wuhan Insitute of Virology as the source of the Covid virus that has killed millions.
Read the whole thing.
But the following comment also deserves reading. Especially the last part.
As a result I find myself reading less and less reportage and instead choose to read more opinion pieces, simply because it is explicitly the opinion of the writer, that a reader can judge on its merits, and not something that purports to be objective reporting whilst only offering half the facts and with a liberal/woke subtext smuggled in.
.Alexander Wood
.. The NYT is an extreme example, but this is happening across most mainstream media outlets to some degree or another. The Guardian and BBC very much to the fore in this country. Any writers and public intellectuals who don’t go along with this liberal Metropolitan worldview are branded heretics – I’m delighted to note this site is still home to many such heretics, and long may that continue!
Most readers won’t mind if an opinion piece is overtly coming down on one side of an argument – that is, after all, what the Opinion pages are there for. But what is troubling is the lack of objectivity in supposedly factual reporting.
Of course it is the duty of a journalist, editor and publisher to choose words carefully and ensure they report factually but who judges where the line between a newspaper’s narrative (that often borders on propaganda) and fake news should be drawn?
When I read a story in the Guardian, or Telegraph or Times – any reputable newspaper- I am reasonably confident that the basic “facts” of the story are accurate – but that often only gives me a fraction of the picture. The rest of it is supplied through the narrative, the framing of the message – it is that which tells a reader how to interpret the ‘facts’. With a shift in narrative the facts of a story can be presented in a radically different light.
The Guardian and BBC, along with every other newspaper and news outlet in this country, presents facts and statistics that back up the narrative they wish to promote. They also fail to report those facts and stats that might counter the narrative they wish to promote.
Are these deliberate falsehoods, ‘fake news’? You could argue that either way, but journalists know only too well that there are two sides (at the very least) to most stories and they choose to present the side that most closely fits their own world view, or the world view of their readers – or indeed the business interests of their owners.
Every day the same event, the same speech, the same policy initiative can be covered by the Guardian and by the Telegraph, with the “factual” points of the story presented, but it is in the framing of that presentation, in what details a journalist (or Editor) chooses to include or omit, that the narrative takes shape. The same information can be employed to tell two different stories that can be diametrically opposed to one another. Thus readers of those two different stories – based on the same facts but presented within a different narrative – can come away with an understanding that is 180 degrees out from one another. You could argue that isn’t ‘fake’ news because there are no absolute untruths involved – but if the same facts can be employed by either side of the argument to bolster their own version of the truth and undermine the other side’s version of the truth then how is it different?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, publications like the NYT, who profess to be most opposed to ‘fake news’, continuously turn out to be the biggest purveyors of the very thing about which they complain.
The NY Times, much like the BBC or Guardian, has a lens through which they see the world – and every day and in every way they find things matching their preconceived world-view. Any stories that might challenge that view are either not reported or are written up in a way that they bear little relation to the ‘truth’ as reported elsewhere.
I read several news sources a day and try to pick my way through the inherent biases of each to try and find the truths of a story and form my own opinion. But even that doesn’t get you to objective “Truth” because, of course I myself read those stories with a subjective eye, how could I not? We all have our own in-built bias towards what fits our world view.
Paul Mason claimed last year in the Guardian that, “The clearest difference between the liberal-democratic newspapers – including this one – and those of the right is that the former have no overarching narrative,” I think he may well genuinely believe that. Which is rather terrifying.
When explaining away Brexit or a Tory success at the polls, bien pensants often talk of the right wing press brainwashing their readers with their narrative. I would suggest they merely reflect the opinions of their readers. (If you think the former then ask yourself, do you believe what you believe simply because the Guardian told you so, or do you read the Guardian because it reflects your worldview?)
As a result I find myself reading less and less reportage and instead choose to read more opinion pieces, simply because it is explicitly the opinion of the writer, that a reader can judge on its merits, and not something that purports to be objective reporting whilst only offering half the facts and with a liberal/woke subtext smuggled in.
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