ABSTRACT
In a wide-ranging exploration of a common myth of news, this chapter painstakingly discusses how news does not reflect reality, discussing, based on research evidence, how news hardly mirrors reality in its emphasis on the negative, focus on knowns and celebrities, demographics of people profiled in obituaries, and international coverage, with its emphasis on preeminent western nations. The chapter discusses news as a process of construction and the fraught, controversial role that facts play in journalism. While acknowledging, with a rich example of news of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ways journalists construct news, the chapter emphasizes the importance of journalistic objectivity as a beacon, particularly in an age when authorities demonize factual accounts and people are prey to online falsehoods. The chapter discusses epistemological controversies involving facts, as well as time-tested procedures the best journalists use to determine the validity of factual accounts in news.
