I understand and appreciate your point. That is why I used the term verifiable facts. If you can verify that claim X is false, (such as Trump’s claim of a rigged election, which have repeatedly been verified to be false) then by all means, report it as such. That is not taking a side. That’s reporting. At least, that’s how I see it.
How often are facts truly verifiable though in practice, especially for a reporter, rather than just deciding that a certain set of people are honest and know what they are doing and asking them for their thoughts and evidence, which is really just taking the side of those people? Like, consider science reporting (because its probably a best case scenario, where claims made are supposed to be statements of objective truth about what was observed that can be physically verified, as opposed to being full of emotions and values). If youre a reporter reporting on something some scientists at CERN or whatever are telling you they’ve found, its not like you as a reporter have access to the equipment they use, or the know how to use it or understand what the data it generates implies. You pretty much just have to take their word for it. You could choose to go ask some scientists in the same field at a different lab who have been replicating the experiments about it, but then youre still just trusting those scientists too, rather than truly “verifying” the original scientists claims in a way that doesnt require taking somebody’s side on the issue by trusting their word or the authenticity of the evidence that they present. Now, with the scientists this is usually good enough, they dont usually have a ton of incentive to lie, and when they do, their colleagues dont have a ton of incentive to help them with it, but with politics, theres a lot of incentive to lie, a lot of incentive to support people on the same side as you, and a lot of incentive to try to undermine those on the opposite side even when the first side wasnt lying, so that trust is a bit more tenuous.
This isnt to say that I think we should take Trump’s blatant lying about the election seriously or anything, but its not like reporters reporting on it can prove for sure that there cant have been some kind of vast all encompassing conspiracy against him, including the legal system and therefore any evidence brought up in the various court cases on the matter, they can just point to those myriad of court cases and conclude that the odds that it was all some kind of conspiracy must be so low that the idea is laughable and not worth considering. Which isnt technically actually verifying that it is false, so much as pointing out that it makes far less sense to take Trump’s side on that than the side claiming he’s a liar such as to be safe in taking the side of the latter.
I understand and appreciate your point. That is why I used the term verifiable facts. If you can verify that claim X is false, (such as Trump’s claim of a rigged election, which have repeatedly been verified to be false) then by all means, report it as such. That is not taking a side. That’s reporting. At least, that’s how I see it.
Allow me to throw this wrench in the works:
Facts without context mean very little, and there will always be some bias in deciding what context is presented.
How often are facts truly verifiable though in practice, especially for a reporter, rather than just deciding that a certain set of people are honest and know what they are doing and asking them for their thoughts and evidence, which is really just taking the side of those people? Like, consider science reporting (because its probably a best case scenario, where claims made are supposed to be statements of objective truth about what was observed that can be physically verified, as opposed to being full of emotions and values). If youre a reporter reporting on something some scientists at CERN or whatever are telling you they’ve found, its not like you as a reporter have access to the equipment they use, or the know how to use it or understand what the data it generates implies. You pretty much just have to take their word for it. You could choose to go ask some scientists in the same field at a different lab who have been replicating the experiments about it, but then youre still just trusting those scientists too, rather than truly “verifying” the original scientists claims in a way that doesnt require taking somebody’s side on the issue by trusting their word or the authenticity of the evidence that they present. Now, with the scientists this is usually good enough, they dont usually have a ton of incentive to lie, and when they do, their colleagues dont have a ton of incentive to help them with it, but with politics, theres a lot of incentive to lie, a lot of incentive to support people on the same side as you, and a lot of incentive to try to undermine those on the opposite side even when the first side wasnt lying, so that trust is a bit more tenuous.
This isnt to say that I think we should take Trump’s blatant lying about the election seriously or anything, but its not like reporters reporting on it can prove for sure that there cant have been some kind of vast all encompassing conspiracy against him, including the legal system and therefore any evidence brought up in the various court cases on the matter, they can just point to those myriad of court cases and conclude that the odds that it was all some kind of conspiracy must be so low that the idea is laughable and not worth considering. Which isnt technically actually verifying that it is false, so much as pointing out that it makes far less sense to take Trump’s side on that than the side claiming he’s a liar such as to be safe in taking the side of the latter.