[JeremyNT]

I like both Taibbi and Greenwald on occasion, but what they do hardly qualifies as journalism.

Let's be honest, substack is just another editorial page. These guys don't have fact checkers and seldom do more than cursory research themselves. The ultimate goal is to generate clickbait. All of which places them... well, just about exactly at the same level of rigor as the editorial pages of the NYT or WSJ.

Editorials are a dime a dozen. They can be fun when they tell you what you want to hear, or introduce you to an interesting new concept, but they're purposefully held to a lesser standard than the news departments.

[brokenkebab]

I see here obvious misunderstanding of what fact-checking is in media biz. F-c is not some sort of tool, or pre-requisite for truth. Neither it's a part of imaginary high standard for reporting. It's a corporate defence line to reduce the risk of an unscrupulous, or just stupid employee damaging corporate brand. In one-man gig such as a Greenwald does, he himself cares for his reputation because unlike majority of journos employed by big media who are names in bylines covered by ad-propelled brand identity, he is brand himself, and cannot make an oopsie, and then find a job in other place after a short vacation.

[jfengel]

But it also means that his allegiance is to the brand, not the truth. People who like his brand are consuming it for the brand, and are not necessarily seeking out alternatives. Errors that would harm the reputation of an ordinary journalist don't do anything to a journalist who can simply reiterate false claims to build their brand.

I'm not speaking specifically of Greenwald here. Just pointing out that independence is no guarantee of trustworthiness, either. People love news that affirms them, regardless of the truth, and sometimes rigid, prominent rejection of the truth can be very good for the brand.

[brokenkebab]

There's a lot in your comment I can agree with, but it all sounds as if corporate media brands make journalists acquire allegiance to truth while small/personal brands do not. In real world both don't. Such allegiance as well as preference for truth from readers' side is rather rare thing in general, not because everybody's bad, but because group allegiance, and comfortable biases usually trump moral rules. Typical news business model is not about pursuit of truth, or guarding democracy. It's about catering to tastes of a particular audience. And all media - big or small - has a strong incentive to skew things to pleasure their readers (and let's not forget inciting tribal outrage which increases loyalty to a brand). This naturally at times leads to rigid, prominent rejection of truth. And fact-checking observably doesn't stop it - because it's not its function. No difference in this field between big, and personal brands in general.

[jfengel]

Oh, I'm certainly not defending corporate media brands. I have stopped reading the news entirely. In large part I've found that even proper news really isn't as important as it's presented[1]. Even before news media became a nightmare, most national and international news simply isn't relevant to me.

You can still get something a lot like the old, boring news from wire services. When I need it, that's where I go. But it's boring, so I don't keep up with it. Real news at that scale would be expected to be boring.

I should pay more attention to the local news, which has long had the same problem -- the motto was "if it bleeds, it leads". Local violent crime is at least a little relevant. But the important stuff is often even more boring: plans for a new park, a forthcoming road closure, a report from the school principal. Relevant and dull, just what I want.

There's still plenty of room for tribal garbage, but at least it's easier to put into perspective.

[1] I feel weird writing that in a rare period where the news actually contains actionable information -- though that's partly because it happened at a time when the government should have been giving me the information and I should have been able to trust it. But I'm setting aside pandemic as a rare case, hopefully to not be repeated soon.

[kyrra]

I'm not sure how much you've read WSJ editorial pages, but many of their pieces involve a lot of research. As a recent case (I forget the exact article), but I was listening to a podcast of a man that recently had a commentary piece in the WSJ opinion section, and as part of it he had interviewed around 20 people for the piece (talking with various state governors about their covid policies). Just because they don't dive deep into each interview, many of their pieces are backed up by lots of research.