Vet-Free Journalism

With a boulder on my shoulder
Feelin' kind of older
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin'
Sneezin' and wheezin'
The calliope crashed to the ground
--Manfred Mann's Earth Band

Recent walk-backs by mainstream media outlets regarding the CovCath DC incident and the fake hate crime incident in Chicago demonstrate one again how little vetting journalists do when they report situations that appear to fit their views of the world.

If a situation aligns with your personal biases, then you will readily admit it as 'truth.' You will be less prone to think critically and pursue the other side of the story. Doing so would be painful and produce negative psychic income. The cognitive dissonance would be difficult to cope with.

The greater the personal bias, the lower the vetting of incidents that, on the surface, seem consistent with one's point of view. Because today's journalists tend to be psychologically invested in similar ideologies, the entire media industry is inevitably guilty of faulty, vet-free reporting of particular types of incidents on a routine basis.