Port: Tell me the lies I want to hear
MINOT, N.D. — Work in journalism long enough, and you’ll inevitably be accused, by some discomfited member of the public, of not being a “real journalist.”
The practitioners of journalism are far from perfect. We are not some breed of mutants lacking human frailties like bias, myopia, or the capacity for making errors. And yet, it’s true, more often than not, that the indignant plaints about what does and does not constitute “real journalism” come down to the complainer wanting to be told comforting lies.
The most confounding part of working in journalism is that the truth often isn’t what you’d like it to be. It’s almost always multifaceted, and rarely does it conform to the strictures of anyone’s ideology.
My intent in this column isn’t to defend the news media. The sins are myriad and egregious. Let’s list a few recent examples.
CNN has told us that left-wing social justice protests were “mostly peaceful” while we could see burning buildings in the background.
