Sad State of Media

Apparently there's a viral video of Matt Damon delivering a well-earned smack-down to a reporter who asked a stupid question.  I haven't seen it yet, but I did see an article on it from The Hollywood Reporter.  The article is titled Matt Damon Is Suddenly The Hollywood Liberal That Conservatives Love to Hate and it made me deplore for the state of dialogue in our culture.

The writer has great fun quoting multiple conservatives mocking Matt Damon's assertion that teachers aren't in it for the money, so financial incentives may not work as well-that they'll do a good job regardless.

I counted twelve people quoted-11 mockingly-but zero analysis of whether or not what he said was actually true or not.  Come on, this is a professional reporter not a unpaid blogger pounding away at the keyboard for fun.  I typed in "Financial Incentives for Teachers" and the top entry was this. And then a bit further down, there was an opposing this.

So maybe the reporter doesn't want to get into education policy for an entertainment article.  I get that.  But would it have been so hard to find a couple of quotes in support of Damon for "balance"  (as much as I deplore reporters who seek false balance when there is none) even though the article is about how conservatives are piling on to Damon?  I mean, a quote from a neighbor that "he is very classy is not exactly a rebuttal.