I agree that journalists misrepresent everyone; I disagree that the direction is mostly random, and it’s not random precisely because “a typical journalist already has the whole story written before they interview you”. In politically-charged situations (a category which includes an ever-growing number of things), this means that an interviewee who is on the same side as the journalist will get favorable representation, while an interviewee on the opposite side will get unfavorable representation. When writing about topics on which there is no particular political orthodoxy, the errors will be mostly random.
You could interview fairly but non-controversially, but this limits you to areas where there is not yet any widespread controversy, a small and shrinking territory.
I agree that journalists misrepresent everyone; I disagree that the direction is mostly random, and it’s not random precisely because “a typical journalist already has the whole story written before they interview you”. In politically-charged situations (a category which includes an ever-growing number of things), this means that an interviewee who is on the same side as the journalist will get favorable representation, while an interviewee on the opposite side will get unfavorable representation. When writing about topics on which there is no particular political orthodoxy, the errors will be mostly random.
You could interview fairly but non-controversially, but this limits you to areas where there is not yet any widespread controversy, a small and shrinking territory.