''Since when is this their remit?''

This might be of interest from British-American blogger Sam Hooper. It begins with the BBC's US partner CBS News:

I feel like for every 100 words published by news outlets, at least 20 are now unnecessarily wasted trying to shape public sentiment to whatever is being reported (even when I happen to agree with it). It's in this sense of constant manipulation that distrust of media is born. 

Here, it's clear that CBS News was so eager to head off any notion that the Omicron variant originated in South Africa that they published a triumphant "Ha! See, it was in Europe first!" article, as if it matters. No real harm done here, but we see it in many contexts. Fox News deciding to use the less-informative term "homicide bomber" a decade ago. The BBC at pains to say "so-called Islamic State". And most recently the selective, inconsistent & sometimes downright misleading use of "fact-checking" articles. 

This paternalistic behavior shows a media elite who look down on their fellow citizens, viewing them as impressionable halfwits lacking agency, at constant risk of adopting "wrong" opinions unless continually medicated with ideological additives to their news consumption. 

However, many media elites are pompous, deeply mediocre individuals, and their clumsy, transparent efforts to shape or "correct" public opinion through skewed reporting only drives audiences elsewhere - some to independent journalists, others towards sensationalist fake news. 

The decline and collapse of corrupted news institutions like the NY Times, WaPo, CNN et al might be welcomed but for the fact that the primary information gathering power of a big newsroom seems hard to replicate - though remote working seems ripe with possibilities there. 

I’ll close with this: it is particularly galling that many of the media elites destroying trust in journalism as they clumsily try to prevent us from falling into wrongthink are themselves so deeply under the spell of the successor ideology that they don’t even realize it.