The essence of journalism is a discipline of verification.
In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art. Entertainment – and its cousin “infotainment” – focuses on what is most diverting. Propaganda selects facts or invents them to serve the real purpose: persuasion and manipulation. Fiction invents scenarios to get at a more personal impression of what it calls the truth.
Journalism alone is focused on getting what happened down right. …
As Walter Lippmann put it in 1920, “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.”
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