The idea of free speech assumes that people speak responsibly. We used to have journalistic standards and we now have Alex Jones, who has been linked to appeals to get people to storm the Capitol.
Some of the obvious standards were:
1. Get two independent sources (unless official sources, as with public records such as criminal convictions and semi-public records such as death notices).
2. Do not make oneself part of the news story. The most that a journalist can be is an eyewitness, and that is as an accident.
3. Do not buy stories with "checkbook journalism'. (The National Enquirer does that by bribing stories from such people as domestic servants, delivery people, and lodging staff when such can tell a lurid story about a celebrity. If you are wise, then you don't recognize such as news).
4. Do not get involved personally in partisan politics or commercial activities that will create bias and destroy your objectivity.
5. Never fabricate or plagiarize news.
6. Avoid cranks, extremists, crooks, lunatics, idiots, cults, and quacks as sources.
7. Stay separate from the advertising department.
8. Get the story out quickly, without analysis. You are a reporter and not a preacher or philosopher.
Some of the obvious standards were:
1. Get two independent sources (unless official sources, as with public records such as criminal convictions and semi-public records such as death notices).
2. Do not make oneself part of the news story. The most that a journalist can be is an eyewitness, and that is as an accident.
3. Do not buy stories with "checkbook journalism'. (The National Enquirer does that by bribing stories from such people as domestic servants, delivery people, and lodging staff when such can tell a lurid story about a celebrity. If you are wise, then you don't recognize such as news).
4. Do not get involved personally in partisan politics or commercial activities that will create bias and destroy your objectivity.
5. Never fabricate or plagiarize news.
6. Avoid cranks, extremists, crooks, lunatics, idiots, cults, and quacks as sources.
7. Stay separate from the advertising department.
8. Get the story out quickly, without analysis. You are a reporter and not a preacher or philosopher.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.