Quoted: Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, praised the Plain Dealer’s transparency. She said journalists should be thoughtful about when to cover disinformation and when doing so would simply give the falsehood a platform. They should also consider how a politician might say or do something to distract from an inconvenient news story, she said.
“They have a responsibility to serve the public interest,” Culver said. “And giving a platform to things that are not true does not serve that public interest.”