"Almost every time I’ve talked to a reporter has gone this way: they had already decided the narrative beforehand."

"I’m never being asked for information — I’m being used for quotes to back up their predetermined story, regardless of whether it’s true. (Consider this when you read the news.) Misquotes usually aren’t mistakes — they’re edited, consciously or not, to say what the reporter needs them to say."

Writes Marco Ament, with a vivid example of a NYT reporter working on a story about hipsters moving to Hastings on Hudson. The story became "Creating Hipsturbia." And Ament says: "The article, which was mostly bullshit, is slowly making itself more true. And our town is doing very well from it."

The town made the news ≈ the news made the town.