Conjecture in journalism

I was looking up Klaus Eberwein's death and I came across this excellent fact check in The Weekly Standard.

Its excellence is condensed in these two passages:

1. The sources used in the article from Liberty One News all lead back to the website Your News Wire, the same website which offers up false headlines like, “ Texas Church Shooter Was Antifa Member Who Vowed To Start Civil War,” “ Another ‘Floating City’ Spotted Over China” and a personal favorite, “ Putin Has Proof Princess Diana Was Killed By British Royal Family.”  
2. The report also cites Eberwein as saying “the Clinton Foundation, they are criminals, they are thieves, they are liars, they are a disgrace,” in a Clinton-related protest in 2016. Wrong on all accounts. There are no legitimate reports backing up the claim that Eberwein said his life was in danger nor was he a “fierce critic of the Clinton Foundation.” Snopes notes, in its fact check on the matter, that the quote came from a BBC article quoting activist Dahoud Andre. 

There is an understanding of the matter at hand there, an understanding of sensationalist journalism akin to reports on UFO sightings. It allows one to take a step back and ask oneself what kind of journalism one wants. One might come up with this scale to choose from:

1. publishing of press releases, court filings and so on,
2. reporting of suspicious activities,
3. warping of facts in order to support an interesting narrative.

The Weekly Standard article makes it clear that this Zerohedge article does not fall into the second category, but into the third.

There's an unfortunate dishonesty these days stemming from notional confusion relating to preferences in media consumption, i.e. the false dichotomy of the main stream and the alternative media. We'd be better served, if we acknowledged frankly to what extent we wish to listen to conjecture, because then we would have to acknowledge each other as being in control of our own media consumption and we would treat each other accordingly, that is as thinking people and not as mindless bots, who just regurgitate what they've been fed, or similarly dehumanisingly conceived of entities.

A society can easily accommodate different leanings and biases, but it gets itself into danger, once the leanings and biases of other people are considered artificial, an acquired malady from being exposed to the wrong influence, because then those other people are  not treated any longer as parties with their own interests, but as subhuman pawns of some nebulous entity that they serve.

It is precisely this what upset me when I first saw the movie The Matrix, because it preaches this world view.

The other pillar apart from the main stream vs. alternative narrative that is upholding the current dehumanisation is the glorification of self-indulgence and in particular of the desire to not have one's feelings hurt, because it leads to outrageous demands and following those outrageous assessments: from a padded cave decrees are issued, or differently put: society is being divided by skewed views and insulation, but this is not being done through skewed views on facts, but through the views on people, who try to form an opinion on what the facts are, i.e. by calling them nuts, sheeple, racists etc.

The whole fake news meme does not only reinforce both sides in their negative assessment of each other, it also diverts the attention away from the way one treats the people one disagrees with, which, of course, is additionally facilitated by the rather impersonal channel of the internet.

Thus we see the tools of the great division, firmly in the hands of the powers that be and no hidden influence anywhere. Has God driven those, he decided to destroy, mad? Or is there a strategic interest? Whatever it may be, at some point sanity needs to be restored and I won't effect that restoration prematurely with this post based on what Google Analytics tells me, so I'm free to discuss it.