I do know. If a reporter in my day failed to adequately fact check, veryify and reverify EVERY fact printed in a news story, and printed something incorrectly that could compromise a person's reputation, he or she received a stern lecture from the city editor and was usually punished with getting crappy assignments for a few days.
To do that intentionally, which is the norm for too much of the media these days, would get us shown the door big time with a serious blight on our record following us for some time.
Now ethics and responsibility are out the window, and blatant partisanship is too often the policy.
Now it is encouraged to print what anybody says about anybody and don't bother to fact check much at all. Out of context quotations are fair game and even encouraged because laviscious headlines sell newspapers and attract what demographics they have to the evening news.
The only major television source that does NOT do that these days is Fox News who, while I still think they utilize more yellow journalism than would be allowed in my day, still do a much more credible job of fact checking and providing rebuttal to what they put out there. And because the American public can't be fooled all the time, that is why Fox enjoys ratings in all time slots that are greater than all their cable competitors put together and as often or not also beat the network news.
