The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism

Thomas E. Patterson argues that today’s journalists are not providing trustworthy and relevant news and that reporters too often give equal weight to facts and biased opinion, stir up small controversies, and substitute “infotainment” for real news. In Informing the News: The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism, Patterson looks at the problems with the press’s eroding quality, and he proposes a corrective. Patterson is a professor in the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.