"Curiosity about the wrong topics"

In the words of Bari Weiss, "Curiosity about the wrong topics has become a liability in the legacy press."

I appreciate Bari Weiss's old-school, stubborn commitment to asking questions regardless of what kind of narrative it would support. The article below isn't by her, but it's from her newsletter. It's about the BYU volleyball racism event (or, non-event, as it turns out). 

I don't think Bari and I would agree on how long ago this phenomenon took hold. And I don't know if she sees it as being as destructive as I do, though she certainly perceives it to be a problem. All I can say is you can't have your cake and eat it too. That is, you can't embrace this kind of activism in your "objective" straight reporting while also wringing your hands about the increasing number of people turning to the dark corners of the internet for their information.

 How the Media Fell for A Racism Sham - by Jesse Singal (commonsense.news)

"If any of these journalists had demonstrated an iota of curiosity or skepticism—if they’d practiced journalism as it was meant to be practiced—they could have had a major scoop. Instead they acted as stenographers, with terrible results."

"Everything that happened here fits into a growing problem in mainstream newsrooms: the injection of political values even into straight reporting, undermining the very purpose of journalism." 

"By this point, between the original New York Times story and a tepid followup, a combined five reporters and researchers had been pantsed by a small student paper. If all this provoked any soul-searching on the part of the Times, it was unclear from its report on BYU’s findings. Remarkably, their most recent story treated the events as unresolved: “B.Y.U. did not directly address why its findings contradicted the account by Richardson, and the statements by both universities left questions unanswered.” It also included a statement from Duke’s athletic director saying the university stood by the volleyball team. The story ends with a reminder that at the overwhelmingly Mormon school, less than 1 percent of students are black, and that a recent report highlighted the university’s diversity issues. It’s unclear exactly why this is relevant; the point seems to be for the Times to advertise that it understands racism is a serious problem at BYU, and that even if the school were not guilty of it this time, everyone knows the university’s soul is not entirely spotless. "

"It won’t take some radical revolution for journalists to better cover fast-developing, controversial incidents involving race and other hot-button issues. All they have to do is rediscover norms that are already there, embedded in journalistic tradition. The best, oldest-school newspaper editors—a truly dying breed—constantly pester cub reporters to make that one extra call, ask that one extra question, follow that one extra unlikely lead. They do this all in the service of making sure their organization prints the best, most accurate version of the news (and doesn’t get sued). They can adhere to these norms without becoming a shill for the powerful. It’s simply a matter of approaching a story with curiosity and skepticism, of not believing they are the advocate for one side in a conflict—no matter how righteous and obvious the battle lines may seem at first glance."