Not everyone is the same, but too many are. I have similar experiences of newpaper articles: whenever I happen to know the case in deeper detail, I find the newspaper reporting sloppy at best, and drama-seeking and distorting at worst.

I'm not saying everyone is the same, nor being cynical.

I'm saying that the standard TJ sets in the speech, and that most people instinctively judge newspapers by is an unreasonable one for a newspaper. He basically says this himself in the speech. Newspapers are not purely factual, by nature. If you want simple facts, you can read the wire services that newspapers often report based on.

Meanwhile, we wouldn't judge other things by this standard. The pertinent example (considering who is making this statement) is a political pamphlet. Honesty, intellectual and otherwise, is important here too. Some pamphleteers are more or less honest than others. But, we don't expect a purely factual and politically neutral pamphlet. When Jefferson wrote his own stuff, pamphlets, autobiography, etc.... he was working within that medium and the nature of the medium dictates a lot.

This position sometimes reduces to "newspaper are just illegitimate." I mean, if you want statistics on the epidemic... those are available. Read wikipedia^. No narrative. No hype. There are plenty who also tabulate and summarize these for you, including google. They just aren't newspapers.

It's (IMO) either intellectually dishonest or naive to want or expect a newspaper to do exactly what wikipedia does and no more. That isn't what a newspaper is.

In practice, this type of argument (I don't think this applies to TJ's speech) is usually made when someone dislikes a narrative. Either that or they're just sick of bad journalism. But, "just print the facts" isn't a newspaper. Newspaper write narratively. That's what they are. You can get "just facts" if you want. You just need to read something that isn't a newspaper.

^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:COVID-19_pandemic_dat...