He does realize that this would destroy the Democrats, doesn't he?
Huh ... Big Media, most definitely to include Ted Koppel, never bother to do that.
History is controversial. We just have to live with that. And that means that there is a band of uncertainty about just about everything. Including a lot of stuff which you insist that I “agree [is] factual"“I believe it is the responsibility of journalists at this time in our history to do what has been their responsibility throughout every other time in history,” Koppel said. “And that is to report the facts. And get away from all the analysis.”
Before the advent of the wire services (particularly the AP), newspapers were mostly about the opinions of their printers. Because newspapers were mostly not dailies but weeklies - and some had no deadline at all - people learned news by the grapevine about as fast as they learned it from newspapers. With the wire services, all newspapers have a lot of input to choose from, but not independent of each other. All newspapers do, therefore, “agree. . . on . . . what is factual.”“Report what’s important, report it accurately, get it fact-checked, make sure that what you’re saying is right,” Koppel said. “And then let the chips fall.”
If only it were that simple. What is important, and what is not important? You said you were going to keep the editorializing out of the news - and there you go, reporting news on the basis of commercial criteria (will it attract the attention of viewers/readers?) which do not guarantee that what you report actually is important - and there you go leaving what I consider important on the cutting room floor!