{"id":2827,"date":"2021-10-21T08:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=2827"},"modified":"2021-10-12T09:11:30","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T13:11:30","slug":"i-sorta-love-local-investigative-reporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2021\/10\/i-sorta-love-local-investigative-reporters\/","title":{"rendered":"I sorta love local investigative reporters\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u2026 yes, they are cheesy showboats\u2014no doubt\u2014but they are cheesy showboats performing what is likely the ONLY FUNCTION most folks ACTUALLY want out of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fourth_Estate\">Fourth Estate<\/a>: <em>to warn them about shit that might harm them on a regular day-to-day basis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A huge portion of \u201cnews\u201d focuses on opinion and \u201canalysis\u201d (which is just another kind of opinion) and \u201ccommentary\u201d (a third name for opinion).&nbsp; All of these are technically forms of <em>fiction<\/em>: a person takes a nugget of reality and weaves whatever the hell they want around it.&nbsp; (DISCLOSURE: I was an op-ed writer for years. I\u2019ve looked hard and long at how these particular sausages are made. It has lead to me being pretty goddamned disgusted by the prospect of eating any.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, the easily maligned local TV investigative reporter?\u00a0 Say what you like about the smarm and histrionic <em>gotcha!<\/em>ness, but those bastards are speaking facts: they smell something fishy, go and get pics, take samples to a lab, and report the results. God Bless &#8217;em <\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7k8d2xmYdEA\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026 yes, they are cheesy showboats\u2014no doubt\u2014but they are cheesy showboats performing what is likely the ONLY FUNCTION most folks ACTUALLY want out of the Fourth Estate: to warn them about shit that might harm them on a regular day-to-day basis. A huge portion of \u201cnews\u201d focuses on opinion and \u201canalysis\u201d (which is just another &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2021\/10\/i-sorta-love-local-investigative-reporters\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;I sorta love local investigative reporters\u2026&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[95,42,77,641,645,646,640,644,572,643,642],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2833,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2827\/revisions\/2833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}