News & Opinion

Louis Menand in The New Yorker, January 30, 2023, describes the decades long decline of the the public’s faith in the press. Former president Donald Trump had much to do with the decline by treating the press as an “enemy of the American people.” Holding to the “objectivity” standard had not served the press or the public as retired media columnist Margaret Sullivan has argued. Menand concludes that the power of the press is “like

Leonard Downie Jr., The Washington Post, January 30, 2023, reports that editors and journalists are finding “objectivity” ill-suited for the challenges of modern reporting. “They believe,” writes Downie, “that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading ‘bothsidesism’ in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and

A federal judge shut down a California law holding doctors responsible for disseminating false information about Covid-19. The judge, William B. Shubb, said the law was “unconstitutionally vague” and that in a new area of study, it is hard to determine the falsity of a scientific conclusion. Governor Gavin Newsom said the law was tailored to address egregious instances of a doctor acting with malicious intent or straying from established standards of care in treating

A federal district judge dismissed a lawsuit by an election-denier group claiming that voting rights groups defamed its members. The voting rights groups had earlier sued the U.S. Election Integrity Plan, election-deniers, for intimidating voters after the 2020 election. The judge dismissed the claims under the legal principal that potentially defamatory statements in a lawsuit are protected if pertaining to allegations of wrongdoing. (The Gazette, January 26, 2023, by Michael Karlik)