Journalists broadcasting their reports without evidence

Picking up a prescription this afternoon with NPR on. I heard for the fourth time a new formulation which NPR reporters have apparently been required to adopt regarding any claim made by President Trump. The formulation is ". . . ., claimed President Trump, without evidence."

Forget the naked partisanship, think about it epistemically. All the mainstream media have gotten rid of most their fact-checkers, their editors, and even their journalists. They are run on lean budgets which are becoming even more lean. Hardly any of them do long form, deeply researched journalism.

Even when they do, they are, like as not, to be ideological screeds of a high school quality level, à la 1619 Project from the New York Times. A long form piece roundly derided by historians and the reading public with an interest in history.

The mainstream media desperately seeks clicks and they get them from opinions, from unverified press releases, or from ideological screeds. It could almost be a game: "The Russia Collusion story was real, claimed NPR without evidence."

Virtually the entirety of their product could be formulated with the same degree of veracity as their ". . . ., claimed President Trump, without evidence."

There is no doubt that Trump communicates vigorously, optimistically and with excess enthusiasm over librarian precision. Like cats chasing a laser light, MSM journalists assume all of it is wrong and equally as wildly claim (without evidence) that Trump is categorically wrong. Sometimes he is. Sometimes he is directionally right, but over-claiming. Sometimes he is simply right and they are wrong. And sometimes, many times, he appears to be deliberately baiting partisan journalists into making fools of themselves.

The classic structure is whenever he makes a forecast. As a made-up example "the economy will boom in the second half." Journalists jump all over the statement reporting how that is wrong. Ignoring that it is an opinion and that opinions cannot be fact-checked. They can be more or less probable but they cannot be inherently wrong. The more they invest their reputation into trying to disprove an opinion, the more desperate and foolish they appear. Even worse in some respects, what Trump often claims is something the public would like to believe and so, by leaping to disprove an opinion, the press are also arguing against the desires of the public.

Trump does this all the time. Scott Adams keeps pointing it out. And yet, like metronomes, the MSM journalists leap at each opinion to prove how they are smarter and more accomplished.

Whatever this new tic is from NPR, ". . . ., claimed President Trump, without evidence" it is extremely dangerous for them. Their dyed-in-the-wool listeners won't be bothered. But rationalists and empiricists are likely to think that most of NPR's reporting is without evidence. And that would not be completely wrong given their own propensity to one-sidedness, misplaced confidence on uncertain matters, their persistent negativity and their rebarbative antipathy.