That Was a Choice

I've got a new piece up at Shareblue about how public trust in the media has fallen to a new low and why:

This is neither neutral nor objective. The media make value judgments about which stories to cover and how to cover them all the time. For example:

1. Is Hillary Clinton having pneumonia newsworthy?

2. If yes, how do we cover it? That is, do we make a straightforward report of the facts, or do we create or repurpose a frame into which we insert it?

3. If we create or repurpose a frame, what additional context, if any, do we need to provide for balance?

4. How much coverage do we dedicate to the story?

Here, the answers appear to have been: Yes; use existing false frame of "transparency"; provide very little to no balance by way of comparison with her opponent's lack of transparency on medical records; and A LOT.

Those are not the only possible answers to those questions, though the media frequently pretend that they are.

There was no requirement—by any standard—that the media were obliged to cover this story in the way that they did nor as intensely as they did.

That was a choice. And it is a choice that gets made, over and over, in order to create the news and shape it in a very particular way.

There is much more at the link.

People have lost trust in the media. And this is why.