The Verification principle in relation to Journalism.

Ayers verification principle suggests that anything that cannot be empirically or analytically verified should be discarded as nonsense. So anything that cannot be proved as a fact is essentially ‘the quacking of a duck’; absolutely meaningless. Journalism is the practice of turning information into money, if the information is not true, a journalist will not (or at least should not) make money. A journalist should always take the verification principle into account when printing statements of assertion, if they cannot be 100 per cent sure that it is factual, it should never be printed, so in that sense the verification principle is vital in relation to journalism. However, modern journalism reliues on more than facts. In any popular newspaper you will see opinion collumsn, essentially nonsense, according to Ayer anyway, but hugely popular with a modern audience. If you watch the news, a good quote will always be a comp0letely non factual statement filled with emotion.

Wittgenstein, in his tractatus argues that the world consists entirely and exclusively of facts. In a sense I suppose this is accurate, but in terms of journalism, for the sake of interesting copy at the very least, a little bit of emoting is necessary. The important thing is that journalists understand the difference between fact and opinion.