11.01.06
Facts? Who needs to check facts?
Ok, I said I was going to do a sequel to my blog entry Niteflirt in the news…kind of…Part 1. The story sort of lost steam, but I can see no reason not to express my ideas on the news media and fact-checking.
What we have here is a confluence of all the worst trends in journalism. The lines are blurred between news, press releases, and infotainment. Somewhere the news media have lost their bearing. I will speak of them as a whole, since I see not much difference in general between news and talk radio (aside from NPR, which still does journalism), soft sound bite television news, newpapers, and magazines.
There’s no need for me to go into detail even. This is just a rant about news organizations that hire inexperienced writers because they are cheaper than those who know their jobs. It’s about newspapers that receive press releases about upcoming books by thoroughly discredited pseudoscientists, and just publish them on a slow news day. It’s about radio talking heads whose personal lifestyle totally violates all the principles they expect us to live by. And it’s about a television station that had a social interest reporter interview someone who had a story full of verifiably false statements, none of which they even bothered to check. Not one.
Thank you. Back to regularly scheduled programming.
