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American Heart Association Was Paid Off By Procter & Gamble To Say Heart Disease Was Caused By Saturated Fat, Not Seed Oils (www.eviemagazine.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] damnthefilibuster 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"reporting all the facts" is an editorial decision as well. There's nothing stopping newspapers from reporting on statements by politicians and comparing those statements to the objective truth or facts within the same reporting. The only thing stopping them is all-sides-ism. I was going to say that fear of getting sued is also stopping them, but they actively do a lot of reporting that gets them sued or killed and they happily go on in the name of First Amendment and journalistic freedoms. So yeah, it's literally an editorial decision to report only on "blah said this!" instead of "blah said this, but the facts don't support it!"

As for spoonfeeding, sure that's always a bad idea. But there's always a fine line, isn't there?

[–] alilbee 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yes, there are various editorial decisions made, directly or inferred, in any article, but that's not the argument here. We're talking about the explicit editorial decision of calling this handover a "bribe". "Bribe" infers intent, which cannot be definitively proven without evidence that they don't have. It's insanely obvious to any reasonable party that the intent is there, but that is the line between spoonfeeding and reporting. They report on what they can prove, and any extrapolations will be left to you as the reader by any news agency that respects their reader in the slightest and isn't just trying to make you believe something. Anything else is propaganda or a tabloid, and I don't want to read it.

I don't think I can rebut your argument in "that fear of getting sued... freedoms" because I just do not think it is grounded in what actually happens, but not sure we can do much but just agree to disagree on that one. Fwiw, I think most reputable news agencies avoid this exact thing very consistently and always have tried to.