News media present a misleading view of what arguments and knowledge are

An argument is meant to be a way to arrive as close to the truth as we can. It's a way of arriving at knowledge.

If parties disagree on some topic, and we want to evaluate their arguments, we need to consider questions like:

• for this topic, what are the relevant considerations for evaluating an argument?
• what is the evidence at hand?
• how do each of the parties' claims stand up to reason and evidence?

But when media outlets present disagreements, they generally do so in a "he said, she said" fashion. They just present the claims, without evaluating them. They don't ask questions to dig deeper, to try to get at the truth.

This lets parties game the system. If a politician knows that their arguments will be uncritically presented, then they won't treat the disagreement as an argument, but as a PR game.

The way the media presents arguments involves an implicitly relativist view of arguments and knowledge. In this view, there isn't objective truth or knowledge. The most fundamental details presented are just what different people say. There is no evaluating those claims, because there's no notion of truth implicit in this view of arguments.

The media is a major source of the arguments that people see. The view of arguments and knowledge that it presents informs people's model of the nature of arguments and knowledge.

The "he said, she said" view makes arguments and knowledge appear relativist, and as things that don't involve reason and evidence.