From The Propaganda Professor:
Let’s try a little thought experiment. Imagine you are a journalist. A real journalist — not a hack for Fox “News” or OANN or Breitbart, but someone who actually has an interest in keeping the public reasonably informed. Say you’re writing a story about a particular development and you want to, or feel obliged to, report what several public figures say about it. At least one of these public figures is blatantly lying. Now here’s the question: do you identify the blatant lies as lies, or do you simply report faithfully what everyone said and hope (naively, one must say) that the public can sort it all out? Does your journalistic commitment to impartiality require you to avoid fact-checking? Or does your journalistic commitment to truth require you to fact-check?
This is more than just a hypothetical scenario. It’s become the day-to-day reality in our era of alternative facts. And very often, journalists are opting for the first course of action: they are giving truth and falsehood equal time, and not distinguishing between the two. This has been the new norm for several years now, but it has become glaringly apparent during the media coverage of the impeachment.
The front page of the New York Times, reproduced above, is a prime example.