He urges news organizations to “establish a tradition of duty and deliberation.” Anyone who has ever been in a newsroom at deadline knows how far that notion is from actuality. Weaver also means that the media’s focus must be reoriented toward readers and away from advertisers and that media monopolies must be damaged up. If the reporter does appear to like an concept you recommend, do not name the reporter each day to ask why the story hasn’t been revealed. Journalists typically file story ideas for pursuit at a later time, when there’s a lull in the variety of urgent news occasions they want to write about. And don’t expect the reporter to notify you or send you a clip if the story does come out. The continuous onrush of deadlines a reporter faces makes that unrealistic.
Public coverage debates now commonly revolve around competing estimates of price, effectiveness, or risk, rather than across the intrinsic merits of a proposal...
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