Both right

Pointless rant, triggered by dueling headlines.

Fox: Leftist media peddles another anti-Trump hoax
MSNBC: Far-right media peddles another anti-Biden hoax

They’re both right. Media peddles hoaxes and lies. Nothing else. That’s the whole story.

The alleged “independents” are no better. Taibbi peddles information “leaked” by Deepstate, which has carefully edited what it “leaks”. Taibbi seems to believe, or claims to believe, that the “leaks” represent truth.

If you want to be trusted, just be a remote sensor. A remote sensor goes to a place that the reader can’t reach easily. Not necessarily an inaccessible place like Antarctica or the inside of an engine, just a place that would require more travel and time than the reader can afford.

And then the sensor simply views or describes what’s there.

In other words, Carver’s rules are all you need.

LOOK ABOUT YOU.
TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.
TALK TO THEM.
LET THEM TALK TO YOU.

Frank Edwards always followed the Carver rules. He went to interesting places like government offices or restaurants, took hold of the people that were there, talked to them, and let them talk to him.

Like a good sensor, he then calibrated the inputs against his carefully maintained standard baseline, merged them into a median or mean as appropriate, and sent the results to his listeners.

A good sensor is a delta or differential sensor. Like a neuron or a car’s idiot light, it compares the current reading with its calibrated baseline, and reports nothing if the reading is the same as the baseline.

Modern media violate this rule constantly. They treat normal events as special, like an idiot light that warns you each time a sparkplug fires or each time the transmission shifts. Normal weather is “climate emergency”. The activity of Congress, or some political celebrity bashing some other political celebrity, is “newsworthy debate”.

A good sensor tells you when something unexpected and consequential happens, and stays silent otherwise.