America’s Is-Ought Problem

The job of a news reporter today is to declare what you can’t yet know to people convinced that they already do.

Journalism on deadline has always been stressful. A gruff editor orders a reporter to simplify controversy, and submit the copy in a couple of hours. The shortcut is this: When you fail to become an expert, phone one. So journalists hold the mic up (officials) and down (“man on the street”). Both directions contain peril. Officials know things but want things, while civilians rarely know what they’re getting into. Contemporary journalism adds a third source: the online gush, with its clips and comments and unintended consequences.

Whom to trust has become an urgent quandary after a series of cases—the murder of George Floyd, the death of Officer Brian Sicknick, the shooting of Ma’Khia Bryant—in which early