The press stoked outrage about an alleged racist incident at BYU, but the story didn’t hold up. There’s a lesson to be learned, writes mattklewis
as demonstrations of the mainstream media’s tendency to believe narratives that comport with their assumptions about the good guys and the bad guys.
Despite the embarrassing results, there is little reason to believe that anyone will be chastened for not doing basic journalism.
Some of this surely has to do with the rise of social media and the “shoot from the hip” style of journalism that gets clicks and ratings these days. The old journalism maxim that “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” has been bested by, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” Some stories are too good to verify, and this is especially true of stories that confirm a popular media narrative. Rinse and repeat.
It’s worth noting that this phenomenon is not exclusive to liberals in the mainstream media. Conservative media are just as likely to fall prey to confirmation bias.. In case you missed it, during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, police unions pushed a story that police officers were deliberately poisoned by Shake Shack workers, and started throwing up.
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