The Patriot Post® · When 'Justice' Trumps Accuracy

Jeff Jacoby: “Speaking last month at the International Press Freedom Awards, Univision’s influential news anchor [Jorge Ramos] told his audience that while he has ‘nothing against objectivity,’ journalism is meant to be wielded as ‘a weapon for a higher purpose: justice.’ To be sure, he said, it is important to get the facts right – five deaths should be reported as five, not six or seven. But ‘the best of journalism happens when we, purposely, stop pretending that we are neutral and recognize that we have a moral obligation to tell truth to power.’ As it happens, Ramos delivered those remarks soon after the publication of Sabrina Erdely’s 9,000-word [faux] story in Rolling Stone vividly describing the alleged gang rape of a freshman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity party. … ‘Maybe [Erdely] was too credulous,’ suggests longtime media critic Howard Kurtz in a piece on Rolling Stone’s journalistic train wreck. … Or maybe this is what happens when newsrooms and journalism schools decide, like Jorge Ramos, that although they have ‘nothing against objectivity,’ their real aspiration is to use journalism ‘as a weapon for a higher purpose.’”