{"id":382482,"date":"2021-04-03T08:45:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T12:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nbcs-lester-holt-is-wrong-journalists-dont-do-truth\/"},"modified":"2021-04-03T08:49:07","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T12:49:07","slug":"nbcs-lester-holt-is-wrong-journalists-dont-do-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/nbcs-lester-holt-is-wrong-journalists-dont-do-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"NBC\u2019s Lester Holt is wrong: Journalists don\u2019t do \u2018truth\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnbcs-lester-holt-is-wrong-journalists-dont-do-truth%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=382482&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>On this Good Friday, perhaps a line from Pontius Pilate in the Good Friday epic <em>Jesus Christ, Superstar<\/em> helps explain the attitudinal errors now so common among today\u2019s mainstream media.<\/p>\n<p>Jesus says this to the Roman governor: \u201cI look for truth, and find that I get damned.\u201d To which, Pilate responds: \u201cBut what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That last line was a subversive camel\u2019s nose under the tent of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newworldencyclopedia.org\/entry\/Normative_ethics\">normative ethics<\/a> &#8212; the philosophical position that some actions or attitudes are inherently, by their very nature, right, and some wrong. The post-modern \u201cprogressive\u201d approach, the version voiced by Pilate, contradicts this idea frequently, with the hideous expression \u201c<em>my<\/em> truth\u201d (rather than merely \u201ctruth\u201d or \u201cthe truth\u201d) becoming commonplace, as if truth were merely a point of view.<\/p>\n<p>Even for those of us who are traditionalists, though, \u201ctruth\u201d in the indivisible sense is not something to be lightly determined. Because humans are fallible, we must take great care, often with searching inquiry, before we pronounce something to be \u201cthe truth.\u201d Truth is not merely an opinion but a near-sacred constant \u2013 but because it is in the realm of the sacrosanct, we should hesitate to claim it, lest we are unintentionally misguided or mistaken.<\/p>\n<p>With that in mind, cue Lester Holt, the anchor of <em>NBC Nightly News.<\/em> Given the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award this week, Holt made the deliberately provocative statement in his acceptance speech that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/karen-townsend\/2021\/04\/01\/edward-r-murrow-award-winner-lester-holt-acceptance-speech-fairness-overrated\/\">fairness is overrated<\/a>.\u201d He went on to explain that what he meant was that the supposed \u201cfairness\u201d of giving equal time and weight to all sides sometimes would entail giving equal time to claims or beliefs that are demonstrably false.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur duty is to be fair to <em>the truth<\/em>,\u201d he said, emphasizing the word. And, later: \u201cRegard for truth must regain a foothold in our society, so that we can weather the storm of tomorrow\u2019s calamities, tomorrow\u2019s pandemics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He said that in the context of asserting that it is part of the media\u2019s job to \u201chelp our audiences understand what <em>our<\/em> role [the role of journalists] is in a healthy democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What Holt really was doing was saying that the media should be the arbiters of truth. But that\u2019s wrong. Especially because so many within that selfsame media are so intent on the idea that there is a \u201cmy truth\u201d and a \u201cyour truth,\u201d what this means in practice is that the media herd takes its own \u201ctruth\u201d and attempts to make it conventional wisdom. From there, it further confuses &#8220;its truth&#8221; for <em>the<\/em> truth &#8212; the real, unalterable kind.<\/p>\n<p>Holt is wrong. The journalist\u2019s job is not to determine what the truth is, in the ideal sense. The journalist\u2019s job &#8212; or at least the \u201cstraight news\u201d journalist\u2019s job, the one that is not supposed to represent the reporter\u2019s opinion &#8212; is to present accurate <em>facts<\/em> with evidence. Facts and truth are not the same things. Reporters should be tradesmen in the trenches relaying facts, within reasonable and indisputable context, <em>not<\/em> professional ethicians divining truth of any kind, whether \u201ctheir\u201d truth or \u201cthe\u201d truth.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, truth is not truth if it is based on falsehoods rather than facts. But facts are much more quotidian, basic things than truth is. Tradesmen should be in the service of the reader, providing facts so that the readers themselves can consider all the facts and try to apply reason to figure out what the truth is.<\/p>\n<p>And while Holt is right that it is not the reporter\u2019s job to be \u201cfair\u201d in the sense of giving equal time and weight to falsehood as to fact, that idea of formulaic \u201cfairness\u201d <em>never<\/em> has been considered part of a journalist\u2019s job. Fairness has never meant an arithmetical form of bean counting to the effect that if one quotes, say, 40 words from one side, one must quote 40 words from the other. Fairness in the journalistic sense means giving an initial respect to all sides, meaning a certain assumption of earned credibility, while presenting facts as unearthed by a <em>process<\/em> that is studiously neutral and transparent. Sometimes, those facts themselves dictate a less-then-equivalent amount of print (or cyberprint) space for one \u201cside\u201d than for the other \u2013 but that has <em>always<\/em> been the case in journalistic ethics, and is thus nothing new.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that so many reporters these days aren\u2019t content with that. Instead, they think they are the very arbiters of truth. That conceit leads them to jump the gun, to assume too quickly that \u201ctheir\u201d truth, the herd\u2019s truth, is \u201cthe\u201d truth.<\/p>\n<p>So \u2013 to finally get to concrete examples \u2013 they decide, without a single fact to justify it, that Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop is merely \u201cRussian disinformation,\u201d when in reality it was, yes, Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop and it did, yes, contain material unambiguously from Hunter Biden of a tremendously embarrassing nature. <em>They were wrong about what the truth was<\/em>, and in their arrogance they presented to the public the major, now provable, untruth that the laptop was a Russian plot.<\/p>\n<p>They collectively decide, without a single fact to justify it, that if Georgia codifies for the first time ever the available of drop-boxes for voting \u2013 an expansion of voting opportunity beyond any non-pandemic availability in the state\u2019s history \u2013 that the expansion is actually a \u201csuppression\u201d of the vote. They present this not as opinion, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/03\/25\/us\/politics\/georgia-voting-law-republicans.html\">but as fact<\/a>. The idea that Republicans are engaged in \u201cvoter suppression\u201d is their truth, so they proclaim it to be the truth.<\/p>\n<p>Well, true fairness would mean that they don\u2019t act as arbiters of truth at all, no matter what Lester Holt says. True fairness would mean \u201cjust the facts, ma\u2019am,\u201d and let the body politic, made up of hundreds of millions of individuals, decide how to interpret those facts. The truth is not the media\u2019s cross to bear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tags:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/opinion\">Opinion<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/beltway-confidential\">Beltway Confidential<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/lester-holt\">Lester Holt<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/journalism\">Journalism<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/nbc\">NBC<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/fact-check\">fact check<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Original Author:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/author\/quin-hillyer\">Quin Hillyer<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Original Location:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/nbcs-lester-holt-is-wrong-journalists-dont-do-truth?utm_source=msn&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=msn_feed\">NBC\u2019s Lester Holt is wrong: Journalists don\u2019t do \u2018truth\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this Good Friday, perhaps a line from Pontius Pilate in the Good Friday epic Jesus Christ, Superstar helps explain the attitudinal errors now so common among today\u2019s mainstream media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2275914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}