Big Media is in love with itself. They fancy themselves as the custodians of ‘truth,’ but more so, they deeply believe that they define truth or increasingly, that they are truth. They sit in both chairs, oblivious to the circular reference, a feedback loop. But how should journalism be validated? Let’s cross reference to another institution.
In academia and all higher learning, students are put through the paces of learning and understanding the value of peer-reviewed research papers following a well-established academic process. Academic papers require citations to be considered valid; the more the better. No citations and you’re just shooting in the wind. But academia also has a problem not unlike journalism. What happens if all the researchers legitimize each other but based on flawed self-referencing citations? It would be like a snowball, picking up mass as it grows larger, flawed citation building on flawed citation. When there is pressure to please your mentors and peers there are rewards for staying in line; professional acceptance and esteem are like the personal lifeblood of the researcher. It is more so the case when grant dollars are factored in, and them amped up further when those dollars come from companies, government agents, and NGOs that have a vested interest in what conclusions are necessary to be shown in the final product. Far from being the pure untainted space of an ivory tower, academia is as corrupt as any other institution. Don’t just take my word for it, academia has plenty of insider critics. If the academic process cannot save itself, does it have anything to teach journalism?
To cite or not to cite:
Opinion, or the slightly more refined noun, commentary, is considered the lowest form of journalism because it’s understood to have personal bias and subjectivity. Opinion may be prone to selective or unverifiable factual foundations. That sounds a lot like ‘anonymous sources.’ Anonymous sources in journalism function as a citation; they’re touted as the source of authority for a news story. The same is true of ‘experts,’ ‘scientist,’ ‘officials.’ All of these are routinely claimed by the self-appointed periodicals of record such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
NER does commentary — and I can say basically anything I want with impunity, shoot it out there as fact and the readers might be none the wiser. While opinion and commentary are often derided as tainted, there is no rule to say that it cannot be anything but 100% factual. I understand these limitations and proceed onward, nevertheless. I could mitigate those shortcomings by essentially following the formula put forth by academia, using citation and references, but I elect not to do so. Why? Let me count the ways.
First and foremost, we live in an especially dangerous time where denial in the face of bald living truth – on video – with witnesses – by sworn, honest, high-ranking testimony, where that truth is summarily denied. I could cite examples of course, but the point of the point is that there are those who would not accept any verified truth presented in any way unless their regime has given them permission to accept and promulgate that narrative. In modern journalism, fact follows narrative, not the other way around. Self-deceit is hardwired into the corrupt mass culture in which we live. Who am I to pick a fight with such obstinance?
What gets cited in a story or opinion piece? I peruse, consume, and synthesize my sources, but if someone wanted to really challenge me, there are all too many people who are ready to just whip out an endless supply of CNN or MSNBC tropes, Jen Psaki ‘post-truth,’ or the Antifa propaganda mix tape. Do those opinion mills hold any more validity than my sources? Hell no. My sources come from a variety of conservative media. I ignore some of it; a lot of it presents unfinished analysis which can be ignored, considered, held for later examination, but then there are the components that are well on the way to becoming validated by multiple sources, like a Hunter Biden laptop, for instance. Mark Zuckerberg’s esteemed fact-checking team declared the story false and banned it from Facebook, even silencing accounts on that story. Zuckerberg considered himself ‘right’ until he wasn’t anymore. Queue narrative-first standards.
This brings me to a proposal for a real solution: If some journalist and periodicals choose to just force narrative first and if citations prove to be to inherently corrupt as well, how should a news or opinion maker be validated?
The polling industry provides a better model for validation, but not at the front end, rather at the back end. Some pollsters are accurate, some are not. Some are intentionally biased and chartered to produce desired trends – a corrupt practice when used. Nevertheless, polling has a scoring mechanism built into the industry. When the dust settles and the votes or opinions are counted, we know who did the most honest work. The ones that score well are trusted more the next time. Polling is math and math will not lie if the homework shows how the problem was resolved.
Narrative-first journalism would like no such controls, but the public instinctively applies them anyway, at least the public that are well-informed. As a personal example, when I started NER, I was more or less a ‘never-Trumper.’ As of this date, those old essays are still posted. Over the years, as I observed story after story proved false or greatly distorted, I came to see that Trump was the opposite of how he was portrayed by Big Media. I score media and you should too. You may have to wait six months or years to see the conclusion of a story to assess it properly, but that day will surely come. You then validate your own sources for news and start to shut out the liars.
In NER, I present factual news, working possibilities – labeled as such — and future predictions. The predictions, of course, are not news in the traditional sense and carry their own separate scoring. Some are right, some do not hold up. As for working and factual news, I claim a high score. For example, many of the assertions I made even in early 2020 about Covid’s origins and Fauci’s involvement have been proved absolutely true. I already mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop as an example. I fare far better than Mark Zuckerberg and his fact-checking team on numerous high profile news stories, but there is really no surprise there. Zuckerberg is narrative first and thus cannot even be considered an honest fact checker. The point here is that the lowly opinion site, NER, is more reliable than many outlets that huff about their journalistic integrity.
Finally, if you or anyone wants to really grill me and my sources, Google them; start reading conservative media and opinion. Do the work. You don’t need me to spoon feed it. I will post some links from time to time as a convenience, but that’s reserved for details that might be arcane to whom I think my readers are or to an article that provides a lot of important details that I don’t want or need to re-write in my own words. A NER reader should be inquisitive, interested, and ready to work to understand the topics that I discuss. Homework: A Primer on How to Evaluate Media for Yourself and for Self-Defense.