How the News Became Fake
We in the media have our hands full with newsmakers who are frauds and sensationalists.
One can never wear out Walter Lippmann’s observation that journalists traffic in stereotypes, not only because they enable “economy of effort.” The stereotypes we embrace also assure us of our own status, such that “any disturbance of the stereotypes seems like an attack upon the foundations of the universe.”
This has been nicely demonstrated in the controversy over the Covington Catholic High School students at the Lincoln Memorial. A snippet of video was confidently interpreted as showing an encounter between racist white...