Do Not Trust Journalists – A Mormon Example
The LDS church is interesting in that it simultaneously large enough and insular enough to make stark differences in journalistic angles sharp.<p>Journalism often falls into a trap that puts the cart before the horse.  It&#x27;s preordained [no pun intended] what type of coverage many events are going to get.  Who among us couldn&#x27;t guess what the NYT&#x27;s take is going to be in a mormon leader&#x27;s obituary before they write it?<p>A journo doesn&#x27;t go into something to figure out &quot;what&#x27;s the deal with [foo]?&quot; That won&#x27;t sell (not to the public, nor their editors). But the reality is often worse.  Journos think they have everything all figured out before they even investigate. They just need to investigate enough information to slap it into their story as if they were a algorithm automatically writing a sports story from the game stats.<p>edit: I&#x27;m editing out an already-vague story about being involved with something that receives media coverage. I&#x27;ll just say if you notice how dumb journos are when they cover subject matter you&#x27;re a unrelated professional in, being the &quot;who&quot; in receiving end of news coverage lets you see just how much they want to draw conclusions for the rest of the world unless you work on visibility to counter their obvious narrative angles.  And the worst thing is, once this is the game it doesn&#x27;t matter how right or wrong they are because organizations are going to fight negative coverage either way.