Fake News in the News

Nothing beats the Dan rather scandal! Nice try liberals!

Author Tom Fenton was on the Daily Show the other night with his book “Bad News”. He says the mainstream media has hollowed itself out by eliminating foreign and investigative correspondents, and piggy-backing on the news wires, leading to the “echo chamber” effect of the modern news cycle. The amount of actual, unique reporting and fact gathering has dropped substantially.

“Old news” some will say, but this guy seems like the first credible source from inside the media to truly make the case.

The governement handing premade reports to lazy news organizations merely exploits this trend.

I don’t see why this is the government’s fault, and why phrases like “state run” media come up. Clearly the decision to run the reports lies with the news organizations. Goverment is just playing the PR game like the private sector does.

Obviously it should stop. But it highlights the weaknesses in the media, not the power of government.

P.S. Where can I look up the “standard rules of journalism.”

Governments in most modern countries will put the most favorable spin in the press releases. The problem is when does favorable spin become government propaganda. The criminal act is when someone purposefully circumvents the law.

I doubt that there will ever be any repercussions from these episodes. The Republicans will not do it to themselves and the Democrats will not bring it back up if they ever return to power.

You might fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, and that is just what the Republicans have done in the past decade. Regardless of how history views Bush, the damage is being done today.

Dan Rather is a responsible journalist. Through his career he has consistently been a good, impartial reporter. He might have made an error of judgment, but instead of attacking him, lets start discussing Novak or O’Rielly.

Just my 2 cent rant.

Nothing liberal activist organizations haven’t done, reporting some dire environmental or health warning based on junk science, in the hopes of gaining sympathy and/or public funding. The lazy media lapps it up up without question and airs it as fact. The Bush administration is just trying the get its side of the story out.

If Dan Rather lost his job for using a bogus source, shouldn’t all those local TV producers also lose their jobs for using a bogus news source?

Hank

Even though this still sounds like a job application, John — I’m involved in the same campaign with my local online newspaper.

We could use a proper threaded forum to carry forward some of these topics. Aside from the proto-flamers who think these topics reduce to I’m a Liberal/I’m a Conservative, nyah, nyah! — you have aggregated a fair number of folks with widely-varied, often-differing points of view — who might enjoy a longer discussion than the short period before something scrolls off the page.

I’d love to have, say, a thorough discussion with T.C. about the important of engineering and architectural trends — or a general round on mobility for those who are [or will be] challenged and might benefit from the recent 4-wheel Segway design. I think any of these would continue to reach out and expand participation in the larger blog.

??? this behaviour was covered on NPR months ago. From what I remember, this happens from both sides from time to time…”News” reports that are actually produced by those with self-interests.

I would think they’d only fool those w/ no critical thinking skills, although unfortunately that’s a large % of the US population.

j.

I get the message..I’m working on it.

Doug wrote:

>> Nothing liberal activist organizations haven’t done, reporting some dire environmental or health warning based on junk science, in the hopes of gaining sympathy and/or public funding.

This difference? HALF A BILLION of YOUR tax dollars paid for this.

Remember when the conservatives used to get their panties in a bunch over 90 million spent for the arts? But half a billion for covert propaganda targeting our own citizens? Noooooo problem man. It’s all minor.