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ecib  ·  4650 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Jay Rosen: NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right
I've seen a lot of reaction on the web to this announcement that amounts to "Duh! Isn't this what news reporting is supposed to be? You mean they aren't doing that already?!?!?"

The (feigned?) incredulity really misses the point.

Fact is, this 'he said/she said' journalism that gives equal time to spinsters on any side of the issue has been increasing over the years and is rampant in the industry.

Yeah, I'm glad NPR is changing their policy, but almost more than that, I'm glad they're doing it in such a public manner. They're naming the problem and putting it right out there. By naming the problem it causes us to have to snap out of it and look at how our news is being presented to us critically, if only for a moment (we Americans have terrible attention spans don't we?). Some of us who love consuming news have been dismayed by this for a while. I suspect many who hear about this announcement will be given pause though. That's a good thing in my book.