That has always been a core tenet of journalism, as taught, but the ability to get information from the Internet has put massive pressure on that.
The simplest explanation is that "scoops" (being the first with a story) is more valuable than being second, so there is tremendous pressure to publish first. As your competitors (who are often lay journalists on the Internet) may have a lower standard of proof than you do, you risk being scooped if you are to stingy with your fact checking.
But the Internet is perhaps a much bigger problem in this regard. It is perceived as journalism while it may be either opinion, commercial speech, or simply hate speech. My Dad will tell me something is true and refer to a half dozen blogs that he reads which all say something is true (my favorite was that half the population of LA was illegal aliens). That is a statement which can be generally challenged on its face but it can also be challenged analytically by looking at the tax base for LA county, not to mention Census records vs available housing. The challenge though was that "every source he checked" said it was true, and they all got their bogus information from probably the same original source what ever that was.
As a result, while I think it is drilled into the heads of journalism students and reporters, it is not the standard operating mode of many more bloggers and vloggers, and as a result we get pounded by falsehoods if we aren't critical in our information sources.
I think there was never some mythical golden age of pre-internet quality journalism, to be honest. I frequently read newspaper articles in supposedly respectable outlets that are not about breaking news yet are still riddled with serious flaws or biases, sometimes outright falsehoods. This problem becomes a hundred times worse when exploring their opinion columns or editorials. If "journalism school" (whatever that is) tries to teach journalists to be unbiased fact checkers then it's not done a good job.
I think the internet has been a massively positive thing for news in general, as it so quickly allows people to do rapid fact checking, get access to contrary opinions, see comments on the articles and so on. If your dad doesn't do those things he probably wouldn't have been more informed before the internet, he'd have just quoted you other one-sided sources too. Fact checking things you want to believe in takes discipline and commitment, it isn't something that was broken by the internet.
No, you had something far more dangerous: plausible-sounding false claims that were repeated without any challenge and therefore ended up being believed without question by a far higher percentage of the population. At least with the Internet, you can find refutations of false claims if you care to look.
You're forgetting about the Yellow Journalism era of the late 19th century.
Or the role of newspapers like the Boston Gazette during the lead up to the American Revolution, that mostly served to turn the populace against English rule.
Or the mass publication of seditious libels during Restoration England. If you want to talk about whacked-out conspiracy theories, you should see what was published in the 1660s through the 1680s. Popish Plot anyone?
The idea that journalists should be unbiased is a very, very modern one.
What I'm really curious about is what changed between the era of yellow journalism and the mid-twentieth century. I absolutely agree that people hearkening back to print journalism as a time when everything was fact-checked and reliable are mistaken, but it really does seem that journalism now is more sensationalist than in the recent past, just not the distant past. That means that print isn't the answer; there's something else to a society that makes its reporting either good or bad. What is it? Corporate power? General partisanship?
I've read that some posit that the switch to a subscription model in part effected the decline of yellow journalism. The subscription customer's purchase decision is potentially less driven by in-the-moment attention-grabbing and more by characteristics like informativeness and accuracy.
> but the ability to get information from the Internet
No, the "both sides" thing and lack of fact checking is absolutely nothing new. It's a fear of being accused of bias, plus some sheer laziness.
On balance, I think the internet has been a hugely positive force for getting real information and marginalized views out there. Of course it can be misused, but some people are just going to choose to believe insane things and nothing can really be done to stop that.
> But the Internet is perhaps a much bigger problem in this regard. It is perceived as journalism while it may be either opinion, commercial speech, or simply hate speech.
This is a false dichotomy. What we get from CNN, NYT, FOX, WAPO is opinion, PR, and better veiled hate speech.
The simplest explanation is that "scoops" (being the first with a story) is more valuable than being second, so there is tremendous pressure to publish first. As your competitors (who are often lay journalists on the Internet) may have a lower standard of proof than you do, you risk being scooped if you are to stingy with your fact checking.
But the Internet is perhaps a much bigger problem in this regard. It is perceived as journalism while it may be either opinion, commercial speech, or simply hate speech. My Dad will tell me something is true and refer to a half dozen blogs that he reads which all say something is true (my favorite was that half the population of LA was illegal aliens). That is a statement which can be generally challenged on its face but it can also be challenged analytically by looking at the tax base for LA county, not to mention Census records vs available housing. The challenge though was that "every source he checked" said it was true, and they all got their bogus information from probably the same original source what ever that was.
As a result, while I think it is drilled into the heads of journalism students and reporters, it is not the standard operating mode of many more bloggers and vloggers, and as a result we get pounded by falsehoods if we aren't critical in our information sources.