National media, we need you to be smarter now more than ever

The NYT and other media really have to get over the idea that Trump values their input, their megaphone, and their good will. He clearly does not. The press has to stop worrying about “access” to him. He needs to be examined and investigated every minute of the next four years. He’s a con artist who fell into the most powerful job in the world and sees it as an opportunity to enrich himself beyond even his own earlier imagining.

The press needs to practice what Jay Rosen calls evidence-based reporting, and the rest of us need to demand it of them.

f you are evidence-based you lead with the lack of evidence for explosive or insidious charges. That becomes the news. If you are accusation-driven, the news is that certain people are making charges. With the details we may learn that there’s no evidence, but the frame in which that discovery is made remains “he said, she said.”

Rosen shows a Twitter conversation he had with an editor who didn’t understand the distinction.