Can't find a good thread for this after checking a few pages of the News/Politics/Law forum, and this seems important enough to merit starting a new topic. Here we can give mainstream outlets a cookie when they actually do a good deed.
Today's cookie is for CNN, which has hired Daniel Dale, tireless
Toronto Star journalist who has made a name for himself by essentially fact-checking the president* in real-time, a task that was widely believed to be impossible before Dale began his Herculean efforts in that direction. Hiring Dale doesn't make up for CNN's many previous errors in judgement such as giving Dump probably billions of dollars in free air time, or giving Chris Cillizza a paycheck, or not placing Chris Cillizza in a rocket and firing it into the sun, but it is at least a step in the right direction for the network. This will also bring Dale to a much wider audience, which he richly deserves.
This thread can serve as a place to compliment major news sources when they get one right, essentially a non-evil complement to the
Why the Mainstream Media Really Sucks thread. While the latter statement remains unquestionably true, they do have their stopped clock moments, and they're worthy of acknowledgement - perhaps if enough people do so, this will trigger a sort of Pavlovian response in the media and induce them to actually try to correct their suckage a bit. It's not too likely, but we can surely at least hope.