Fox News: A Healthy Dose of Skepticism

One of the most critical traits required of any journalist, lawyer, investigator, scientist, or anyone else whose job is to examine evidence, listen to conflicting stories, and make sense of what they find is a little thing called “skepticism.” Skepticism is what causes you to question the things that just don’t seem right, and to check the things that seem too good to be true. But journalists have abandoned skepticism, as shown by their reaction to a recent Fox New directive.

At one point, journalists realized that skepticism was a necessary part of their jobs. Indeed, this principle was summed up perfectly in a statement attributed to the City News Service of Chicago: “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” But modern journalists no long respect this axiom.

Mike Vick is reformed! Sure, his apologies were not apologies and his mea culpa was more of a mea accusa everyone elsa, but the NFL says he’s reformed. Lindsey Lohan’s publicist says she’s sober. Sure, she ends up in rehab more often than most people go to the bathroom and she’s constantly photographed coming out of clubs drunk, but her publicist sounded very sure.

What do you mean the Democrats aren’t the party of the working class? They say they are. Sure, they get their money from rich lawyers and Wall Street, and they do favors for banks, but they say they don’t really like those people. What do you mean Obama isn’t the ideal leader? Sure, he has no educational or professional record and his first book reads like someone else wrote it, but he looks nice and he reads well. . . and all the Democrats say he’s a genius.

You get my point? The media has reached a point where skepticism is no longer considered part of the job. They will report any assertion as true if the assertion comes from the right people, even when it’s patently obvious the asserted facts could not be true. And they will uncritically parrot any conclusion, no matter how unsupported or how illogical, so long as it comes from the right people.

Indeed, the closest they come to skepticism is cynicism, but that’s not the same thing. What separates cynicism from skepticism, is that skepticism involves a thorough process of starting from a default position of doubting all that you are told, and then vigorously trying to prove or disprove the assertions. . . letting the facts fall where they may. It has no bias.

But cynicism, on the other hand, is just an opinion and it is pure bias. Cynicism takes from skepticism the idea that simple assertions cannot be trusted, but rather than seeking to prove or disprove those assertions, it stops at disbelief. Thus, if you do not trust the source, then you cast doubt on the source’s data, their motives and intentions, their capabilities, and their seriousness. And that is exactly how modern journalists behave, not with skepticism, but with cynicism. Indeed, they no longer seem capable of true skepticism, just cynicism directed at the people they don’t trust, i.e. Republicans, and blind faith in the people they do trust, i.e. Democrats and other leftists.

Consequently, it should come as no surprise how leftist journalists have responded to the news that on December 8, 2009, Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon issued a memo to his reporting staff telling them to be skeptical about assertions of global warming. Here’s what he said:

“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

Their response should be, “excellent! We, as journalists, must be skeptical of all things and this fits perfectly with our credo.” But that’s not how they responded. Instead, they called this directive “conservative spin” and they ranted furiously that Fox would not bow at the global warming alter. The horror, the horror that journalists would treat disputed facts as disputed!

How sad is it that the same profession that refused to believe that Presidents never sanction breakings and enterings, that the Pentagon never lied, that corporations never committed crimes, that scientists never faked data to get contracts, that colleges never paid their athletes. . . would suddenly be outraged that other journalists have dared question disputed “science” that has been exposed as the domain of liars, cheats and data-fakers.

The fact that these “journalists” react this way should tell you all you need to know about your ability to trust their reporting and their analysis. It is yet another black mark in the eye of modern journalism.