| >But mainstream journalists almost to a fault genuinely view their job as bringing important facts to their audience, and they care about getting things right. What you call "mainstream media" I call "corporate media". And some journalists may feel that way however clicks, eyeballs, and stickiness take priority over their views. There’s too much competition for traditional media outlets to survive without adopting techniques that were once unthinkable. Corrections are rarely issued these days and edits are done in an almost stealthy manner. I had to stop following the Twitter accounts that tracked these changes because it became an endless stream of tweets. The days of Tim Russert, David Broder, Jim Lehrer, Ted Koppel etc. are long gone. I would consider Matt Taibbi[1] one of the last journalists that followed in their footsteps but he is definitely not corporate and barely mainstream. Taibbi left Rolling Stone and uses Substack which has been attacked by the NYT, and others, as alt-right and misinformation which I find ironic coming from the paper that published Judith Miller’s WMDs propaganda. Even Jason Calacanis referred to Taibbi as a “right guy” on one of the recent All-In podcasts even though Matt is an ardent Sanders supporter. The Blob doesn’t like it when you don’t toe the line. Corporate media is dead to me even though the vast majority of it is "Left". >I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't that much of an argument. Really? I don't watch Fox News or any corporate media and you assumed I did. You might be shocked to learn that I worked in the Clinton administration and voted for Obama! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlHnhnmB1A |
When you say you "trust" a broad news organization I generally expect you mean that you take what they report to be a reasonable representation of the truth and that they aren't hiding things from you or otherwise spinning the interpreation.
When you say you "trust" an opinion journalist, really all you mean is that you agree with them[1]. Taibbi doesn't give you the whole story on anything! He gives you his perspective. This is what he wrote yesterday, for example: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/savor-the-great-musk-panic?s=r Now, sure, you might agree with that take. But you wouldn't hand this to your grandpa if he asked what all this stuff he was hearing about The Twitter was about.
[1] Personally I find that brand of anti-anti-right leftist journalism really tiring. Taibbi takes shots against the center left that draw eyeballs from people who want to see those libs suffer and in broad service to entities (yes, including the Russian government) that oppose them. I can't think of the last time I saw him write about a problem that I, personally, would like to see solved. Instead he writes about the other problems (some of them legitimate) with people who are trying to solve the problems I do care about. Where is Taibbi on climate regulation? Where is Taibbi on income inequality? Where is Taibbi on police violence? Where is Taibbi on increasingly criminalized women's health care? Damned if I know either. But I know where he stands when the libs are upset about Twitter!