Just as we were wrapping our heads around the oxy-moronic concept of “fake news,” the Trump administration introduced us to “alternative facts” as its new name for lies. The Washington press corps was left sputtering, resorting to making too big a deal about the administration making too big a deal about the size of Inauguration Day crowds. Yet it is not demonstrably provable untruths that threaten the republic. It is, rather, the shallow kind of journalism that treats all “sides” of a story as equally valid. That is the kind of “news” that buys into the myth that Gov. Rauner and Speaker Madigan are equally at fault for the state’s fiscal mess, and that accepts without question the political argument that nuclear power is a clean fuel, sort of like solar. Our little newspaper has always tried to go beyond these fake equivalencies that result in fake news. Telling it like it is involves giving readers enough information to know who is not. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2017.
