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I think you are mistaking journalism with creative writing.

The core part of journalism is to present facts and let the interpretation up to the reader.

So, like a phone book?

Journalism should be about illuminating a topic, including providing context.

I have my gripes with journalism that misuses facts and statistics to spin an alternate reality, but I don't think this was the case.

The twitter account never pretended to be a US official, it's always been clear that they are an "alt" account.

So for you to claim (someone who, if I'm not mistaken, has zero first hand knowledge about the situation) that your interpretation is more accurate than a "lousy" journalist who actually researched the issue is to my mind a little weird.

BTW, I'm sure you're aware that editors write headlines, not journalists right?

"So, like a phone book?"

No, like a scientific paper. Have you ever tried to read one and understand this alien concept on how you can actually present facts without giving leeway to your personal politic views and fantasies?

Scientific papers are opinionated. Look at the one for PageRank:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

No it isn't. A journalist does research and reporting and what the reader sees is a filtered view of all the facts (and non-facts) gathered, analyzed, and cross-referenced in that process.

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