Journalistic authority and its vulnerabilities: Factuality, bullshit, and “almost-truth”
Joux, Alexandre
Journalistic authority and its vulnerabilities: Factuality, bullshit, and “almost-truth” - 2024.
75
In response to fake news, fact-checking recalls the facts and attests to their veracity. It thus ignores the communication dimension of journalism. By addressing the public, journalism also aims to give meaning to events. Otherwise, it seems powerless against bullshit, that is, all those performative statements that ignore the facts more than they betray them. The authority of journalism is thus weakened by not claiming its political dimension, namely the commitment, for its public, to interpreting the facts from a strong rational perspective. Topical examples illustrate this approach: the discourse on media literacy by journalists of the Decodex; the fact-checking by CheckNews and the Décodeurs of the Macron–Le Pen presidential debate of 2022.
Journalistic authority and its vulnerabilities: Factuality, bullshit, and “almost-truth” - 2024.
75
In response to fake news, fact-checking recalls the facts and attests to their veracity. It thus ignores the communication dimension of journalism. By addressing the public, journalism also aims to give meaning to events. Otherwise, it seems powerless against bullshit, that is, all those performative statements that ignore the facts more than they betray them. The authority of journalism is thus weakened by not claiming its political dimension, namely the commitment, for its public, to interpreting the facts from a strong rational perspective. Topical examples illustrate this approach: the discourse on media literacy by journalists of the Decodex; the fact-checking by CheckNews and the Décodeurs of the Macron–Le Pen presidential debate of 2022.
Réseaux sociaux