Trying to get something helpful out of all this, let me just mention something. Let’s assume a well-intentioned journalist. Presumably that journalist is going to adhere to something like the standards of professional journalism in trying to deliver something approaching an impartial picture of reality. But these standards are outdated. We continue to learn more about human behavior, specifically in processing information and forming opinions. And what we learn suggests that it’s incredibly easy for ill-intentioned actors to game the media into presenting a highly distorted picture of reality. In focusing on means rather than ends, journalists become patsies for all kinds of bad actors.

This should be very embarrassing to professional journalists, but as best I can tell they see no problem with the way they do their jobs. If the ultimate effect of the work they produce is exceedingly different from what they intended it to be, they’re either ignorant of this fact, or they chalk it up to the society they cover and not the way they cover society.

Non-professionals and explicitly partisan writers are going to do what they’re going to do. Those who aspire to professionalism ought to approach their work more systematically, in an effort to understand how the job can best be done. There should be a real desire within the field to do the work better.

Or maybe that’s silly. But if we’re going to pretend it’s a profession, complete with graduate degrees and professional associations and generally agreed upon standards, then maybe we should approach the job like grownups.