The 'fake news'-ification of local news--and what to do about it

[Nevilledog]

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/the-fake-news-ification-of-local-news-and-what-to-do-about-it.php

The Letter from the Editor that ran on March 23, 2021, did not shrink from acknowledging the challenges the Bucks County Courier Times faces reaching conservative readers in its politically diverse community. But Shane Fitzgerald, then the paper’s executive editor, still managed to take a hopeful tone.

“We’ve been called biased, fake news, a liberal rag — and those are the kind ones.… We want to find a way to constructively engage and connect with [the conservative] point of view.”

The paper would be launching a new initiative, he announced, to better understand and connect with its alienated right-wing readers. “We have to make an effort to listen to one another, for the greater good of our communities,” he wrote.

Six months later, Fitzgerald published another letter to readers that struck a decidedly less optimistic tone. Explaining the ground rules for the paper’s opinion section, Fitzgerald grumbled:

“The idealistic and, frankly, naive goal would be to help people rationally discuss issues, candidates and the future.… Some of you are going to stop reading after this next set of bullet points, but I’ll go ahead and elicit eye rolls and angst anyway.”

He listed points the Courier would refuse to treat as open questions—such as claims that “the election was stolen”—despite knowing this would elicit precisely the accusations of “fake news” and “liberal rag” he had lamented half a year before.

*snip*