Why the media's fact problems are much bigger than Rolling Stone

Sadly, for many journalists covering politics, it’s a regular practice to trust sources without question when the source is telling them something they want to hear. That’s just as true of reporters covering “Jackie” as it is reporters covering Congress and the White House. Far too many reporters covering this administration are willing to swallow whole the outlandish claims made by officials regarding what happened in the IRS scandal and, basically, every other scandal that we’ve seen in the last six years. The way Sabrina Erdely and Rolling Stone treated Jackie is the way a lot of reporters treat the causes, candidates and White House that they love and are passionate about.

So yeah. George Packer is wrong when he says the Rolling Stone debacle has no larger significance for journalism beyond itself. The media wasn’t exactly swimming in seas of credibility in recent years. But the more we push narrative over facts, the worse it’s going to be for us. You can deny it all you want, but this “shattered glass” debacle is at least as much cause for journalistic introspection as the previous one.