https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl...39493.html

Article worth its own thread.

"I was struck by the confluence of two stories last week that reflected either directly or indirectly on how people in my profession -- journalism -- do their jobs.


One piece was an op-ed by David Harsanyi at The Federalist titled "Political Journalists Are Trying To Gaslight America." The second was an interview at Spiegel Online with President Obama’s former adviser Ben Rhodes (pictured).


The premise of Harsanyi's piece is that "In the past week, I’ve noticed a number of Democrats and liberal journalists refusing to concede inconvenient facts....."" <I posted Harsnyi's piece elsewhere>

"...Which brings me to my thesis about good journalism: “Ask the right questions and let the answers speak for themselves.” The American people don’t need to have reality filtered through the cannabis-enriched brain cells of our celebrity media elites...

The answer for me came in that story from Der Spiegel. The interview with Ben Rhodes took the form of a Q&A. It’s not the most elegant form of reporting, but it has the distinct advantage of transparency. What exactly did the reporter ask, and what level of responsiveness did the subject of the interview exhibit? With a Q&A, we don’t have to guess, whereas with any typical five-person-bylined story in the Washington Post or the New York Times, we have no idea what questions were asked, nor can we ascertain whether the reporters’ characterization of the answers is trustworthy. How much more enlightening it is to read the interview in whole.

What was most remarkable about the Spiegel interview was that the questions proved to be more interesting than the answers, and most interesting of all is how Rhodes spun every challenge to his left-wing orthodoxy into, well, another attack on Trump. ..."