Lever (1/8/23)

This week on CounterSpin: US reporters used to talk, even brag, about telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may, and more acutely, about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable—in other words about using their special, constitutional power to look behind curtains most of us can’t, and bring us meaningful information we could gain no other way. Not stories that might amuse us, which are fine, but more centrally, the sort of stories that might help us actually change a society that few would describe as perfect.

How did that morph into elite reporters cutting their evident conscience to fit, not just this year’s fashion, but the particular fashion of the particular power source they institutionally favor? And what’s the cost of that approach to the public, who, still today, look to news media, not to pre-chew their food for them, but to give them accurate, independently sourced and documented information to help them make their own decisions about the world and their place in it.

Journalist David Sirota has thoughts on that, as well as a new outlet, the Lever, focused on what one would hope would be the fundaments of media institutions: power and accountability.

Transcript: “‘We Live in a New World Where Accountability Barely Exists'”

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of forced arbitration.