“People don’t notice this boilerplate language after a while,” Rosenstiel said, “or even begin to bristle at it.”What’s the alternative? Journalists should take the time — even in an ordinary news story or brief broadcast segment — to be more specific. Let’s offer a few sentences that give detail on why the claims are baseless and how they’ve been debunked. We know what damage has come from helping the Big Lie to spread. But given that democracy depends on a society accepting a common set of facts, it is urgently necessary to do something.

Source: Washington Post January 17, 2021 11:02 UTC