News Credibility, Political Consequences and the Case of ICE
News Credibility, Political Consequences and the Case of ICE
Publish Date: 2026-01-28 01:36:00
Source Domain: baltimorepostexaminer.com
Prof. Robert P. Newman, the late head of the William Pitt Debating Union at the University of Pittsburgh, was one of the most nationally well-known professors of rhetoric and communication until his passing in 2018, and his specialty was evidence and credibility.
His book, Evidence, focused on what should be believed as opposed to what was believed, according to an array of criteria such as reporters’ relationships to a situation’s principals or ideological principles, contemporaneousness (is a source of information close in time to the observations made), reluctant testimony (is a source testifying contrary to his or her own vested interest) and the like.
(Ironically, as of this writing, AI (Artificial Intelligence) has the picture of someone who is not Newman next to a paragraph identifying and highlighting him.)
In the last 10-15 years with the explosion of media in competition to be first at the expense of being accurate–the 2013 Duke Lacrosse rape accusation, the Michael Brown “Hands up; Don’t Shoot” accusation, the Boston Marathon Bombing accusations; and many others, leading now to the Alex Pritti Minneapolis accusation—media credibility has led to a general diminution of belief in media accuracy.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/Opinion/2013/0419/Boston-bombing-Media-haste-makes-mistakes
Medium has some commonsense advice for media that in their competition to be first mislead their readers:
“…[O]ur brains are wired to cling to the first version of a story we hear, especially when it feels familiar or validating.
For media organizations, this means issuing corrections is not just about honesty but also about timing, prominence, and clarity. Corrections must be made quickly, clearly, and visibly to maximize their effectiveness, and sometimes repeated to counteract persistent misinformation. A single update tucked at the bottom of an article won’t cut it—not when falsehoods are repeated across headlines, hashtags, and hot…
