by Larry J. Sabato

About the author: Larry J. Sabato is the author of Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism Has Transformed American Politics, from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.

reporter and editor Lewis Lapham

Lapham is wrong. People have every right to expect the truth from the press, and most journalists fully accept their responsibility to report the news accurately. Despite deadline pressure, and even though the news is only the proverbial “rough first draft of history,” newspeople by and large do a remarkably good job of delivering a reasonably reliable version of events. That is why the trend toward publishing and airing unverified rumors is so deeply...