Pretend reporters

"I'm just trying to get as much information as possible. To really write the truth, you know. I want to paint as objective — and truthful — a picture as possible."

Virginia Feito, Mrs. March

Virginia Feito

The words above are spoken by a fake newspaper reporter in Virginia Feito's novel Mrs. March. They are spoken by Mrs. March herself, a suspicious wife well on her way toward insanity. She is trying to gather clues to prove her husband is a murderer.

Even mad Mrs. March, pretending to represent the New York Times, knows very well what is required of a good reporter: gathering as much information as possible, writing the truth, being objective.

Yet newspapers across the United States today are in trouble, in part, because their own reporters don't know this. Or if they do, they ignore it. And now more and more people are ignoring them.

I am a former newspaper reporter who practiced journalism more the way Mrs. March practices it than the way most current reporters on the New York Times, Washington Post and other prominent newspapers practice it. They are more propagandists than objective reporters. They do public relations for the political left. the Biden administration and the Democrat Party. They scoff at objectivity and truth. They ignore any facts that don't fit the chosen narrative.

This, of course, is not the only reason newspapers are in trouble. They have been in trouble for decades now. Thanks to their televisions, phones and computers, people have access to many other sources of information. They can get whatever flavor of "truth" they desire, whether it is really true or not. They don't have to buy newspapers, and newspapers, having lost any pretense of objective reporting, keep making it easier to ignore them.