I don't think journalists need to
distrust authority, necessarily. But good journalism would involve followup questions like:
* Are masks ineffective in the sense that they don't reliably stop the spread of the coronavirus, or in the sense that they don't impact it in any way?
* Taiwan and South Korea believe masks are effective and are handing them out to their citizens. Why do they believe masks are effective, and if it's not true what do we know that they don't?
* Masks intuitively ought to work; I cough out the virus, but sometimes it'll get caught in the mask instead of going into someone's nose and mouth. What part of this story is flawed?
