Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippa58
I understand your point, but if the reporters' assignment is to find out what's going on inside the white house in the aftermath of junior's e-mail scandal, then what's the alternative? Would you rather see a story featuring nothing but Sarah Huckabee-Sanders' ****-shoveling quotes? Now that would be lazy reporting.
But you can't be confident you got an accurate picture of what's going on in the White House from that article. With a bunch of unattributed gossip, you almost certainly didn't, but you were given no information to deduce who was trying to influence your opinion to their view of events.
If the choices are reprinting Kellyanne Conway's background dirt and Bannon's gossip given to you off the record, Huckabee propaganda, or nothing, then news outlets should do nothing. There's honestly no real qualitative difference between Conway off the record and Huckabee/Spicer at the podium, it's just bull**** with a different pretense.
OBVIOUSLY if Conway is saying, hey, here's a scoop, off the record, if it comes from me I'll be fired, then perhaps they should print it anonymously sourced. Hard to say. CNN owes it to its readers to justify why they gave anonymity. It's far more likely these people like Conway and Bannon are super powerful highly paid/experienced media spin agents just plying anonymity because it's convenient and more useful for them, and CNN is acquiescing in exchange for access/scoops. That's decidedly a bad journalism practice; that's how the media gets gamed doing the interests and bidding of the powerful and spreading propaganda uncritically.
Last edited by DVaut1; 07-12-2017 at 05:29 PM.