How Culpable is the Media?

[Willie71]

Good timing: Thom Hartman commenting on the state of the media.

 

 

He's calling for a return of the fairness doctrine.

 

 

Critique of Anderson Cooper for not having journalistic ethics/standards.

 

Edited March 30, 2016 by Willie71

[Sirona]

The 24/7 cycle does seem to force journalists to rush stories to be the first to report. Again, the emphasis is on ratings and profit rather than on accurately informing the public the way it should be. This in particular seems to be a big problem. Stories that require depth get skimmed with this method, and as Ten oz mentions, waiting for a story to develop gives us more to go on than a cursory, kneejerk appraisal.

 

On stories like that, putting spin early in the news cycle seems foolhardy. I think is why they don't source themselves, and why the news gets to be more and more vague, so it can appeal to the most viewers.

Sure, that's true but you could also just skim through daily news and read news analysis for a better researched, informative and in-depth analysis. There are news magazines/journals which have weekly articles and the reporters are not only more experienced but have less pressure to spit out a story as fast as possible.

 

Unfortunately people enjoy tabloids, especially in a nation of busybodies who are more interested in gossip than news. Take the Sydney Morning Herald for example, you only need to read the comments section to know the paper is aiming at the average Joe.

[iNow]

The 24/7 cycle does seem to force journalists to rush stories to be the first to report. Again, the emphasis is on ratings and profit rather than on accurately informing the public the way it should be.

They'd rather click-bait than educate.

[overtone]

In 2014, a bill to address some extra money and attention to the matter of suicide among Iraq War veterans was blocked in the Senate by a single Republican Senator.

 

This Senator - Tom Coburn, R-OK - was apparently fulfilling his promise from the Caucus Room Conspiracy that had held sway since Obama's initial inauguration and motivated dozens of filibusters over the years, by blocking a bill that granted benefits to military veterans of foreign war.

 

This was, one would think, worthy of reporting on the major news channels, both as a human interest and man bites dog item, and as an illustration of the Republican Party's behavior in the Senate regarding anything supported by Obama.

 

It didn't get any:

 

At the time of the bill's blockade, Media Matters noted that there was virtually no coverage of the radical obstructionism on CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC or PBS, as well as news blackouts in the nation's six largest newspapers: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, The Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, The Denver Post, and Chicago Tribune

[Bill Angel]

Unfortunately people enjoy tabloids, especially in a nation of busybodies who are more interested in gossip than news. Take the Sydney Morning Herald for example, you only need to read the comments section to know the paper is aiming at the average Joe.

There was an excellent example of this in the media coverage of US Senator John Edwards' extramarital affair

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards_extramarital_affair

[Sirona]

The best example is probably the News International Phone Hacking Scandal and how News of the World violated the Computer Misuse Act 1990 by unethically and illegally gaining access to the confidential phone calls of celebrities, hence violating rights to privacy by misuse of power. For what reason? To expose celebrities for their 'sinful' acts because that's what average people enjoy reading and what sells. It's this 'busybody' nature I find particularly concerning.

I am not sure about the US as I am Australian, however, if you ask most Australians to tell you something about Bill Clinton I can almost certainly say that they will mention Monica Lewinski. Never mind about Kosovo, welfare reform or Iraq sanctions, he had an affair! He cheated on his wife! Can you believe it?

[Ten oz]

That's true. Most news stories contain very little facts in general. I would say that 'pure fiction' is an exaggeration too. Sometimes those stories can be extremely useful because although they may contain very little facts, they give you a lot of information about intent and motivation. One thing I find particularly annoying is the lack of referencing even in my 'trusted' news sources. References would would ensure a lot more validity and accountablity.

During Katrina I saw live breaking news feeds where reporters said there were rover gangs murdering people in the Superdome. False reports of people being murdered, raped, and shot at actually impacted the response. Those reports where pure fiction. The argument can be made the that journalists were just reporting what they were being told by "sources" and that it isn't their fault it was not true but it was still fiction. Thinking a lie might be true doesn't make that lie true.

 

I understand that during various events many facts are unknown. That the media is just out there trying to get information out quickly as possible but they should have some responsibilty to not make matter worse? During an emergency shouldn't they encourage people to remain calm? After the Boston Marathon bomb there were early reports that ciculated various images of "suspicious" people with backpacks that later turned out to not be involved. How is that time of speculative reporting any other than fiction? Just a editing room pulling up video of the crowd and saying 'maybe this guy, oh, maybe this other guy".

 

I could be mistaken but I think journalists use to have better internal working relationships with police, fire, and other first responder departments. Newspapers, Magazines, local news channels, and etc use to employee full time journalist that specialized in specific fields. They were subject matter experts that could report intelligently on how the local Police or whomever may handle an event. Their speculations were based on personal insight developed from knowing the people involved and following them for years. As the print media died and 24/7 cable news eclipsed local news less and less news media sources employee such journalists. It is just more cost effective to have some pundit in a news room a few hundred miles away with no relationship to the situation speculate than it is to find someone who might know something.

[iNow]

Making matters worse:

 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130124092300.htm

It seems like a great idea: Provide instant corrections to web-surfers when they run across obviously false information on the Internet.

 

But a new study suggests that this type of tool may not be a panacea for dispelling inaccurate beliefs, particularly among people who already want to believe the falsehood.

 

"Real-time corrections do have some positive effect, but it is mostly with people who were predisposed to reject the false claim anyway," said R. Kelly Garrett, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.

 

"The problem with trying to correct false information is that some people want to believe it, and simply telling them it is false won't convince them."

In most cases, memory of the lie persists if we heard it first, despite later correction.

[Sirona]

I understand that during various events many facts are unknown. That the media is just out there trying to get information out quickly as possible but they should have some responsibilty to not make matter worse? During an emergency shouldn't they encourage people to remain calm? After the Boston Marathon bomb there were early reports that ciculated various images of "suspicious" people with backpacks that later turned out to not be involved. How is that time of speculative reporting any other than fiction? Just a editing room pulling up video of the crowd and saying 'maybe this guy, oh, maybe this other guy".

Sure, good point. Though, sometimes news articles aren't false due to journalists trying to get information to the public as soon as possible and reporting events as they are occurring. At times they can be be purely careless, hear something and report on it without any preliminary research and not just on news stories but feature articles too. There is little excuse to have a completely false feature article since they're supposed to be well researched and take a greater deal of time to put together. However, sometimes a journalists motivation is pure narcissism and they simply want to get their name on anything. An example was the series of 'Blonde Extinction' articles from BBC news, ABC, CNN, and the Daily mail (No surprise at all from these guys).

 

Here is one of the articles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm

 

If you read it, you'll notice that it's very vague using terms like 'A study by experts in Germany' (Who are they? What was the study about? Where is the data/findings from the study?), 'Finland will be the birthplace of the last blonde' (How do they know this?). This is also a straight out lie, 'A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.' There was no WHO study found to support this and the 'German experts' cannot be named.

 

The Washington Post found that after doing some research, the story was snapped up from from a women's magazine named 'Allegra'. http://jclass.umd.edu/archive/newshoax/casestudies/scimed/SciBlondWP.html

 

It just goes to show that referencing and sources, unless they're specific with citations and links are not reliable either. In this case, journalists had the time to research the blonde gene and there was no urgency to get these articles to the public. It would have made no difference whether they published this article in an hour, one day or a month as it's not something the public needed to be informed about right away. It just highlights the carelessness and narcissism which unfortunately is a bit part of journalism.

 

Edited April 1, 2016 by Sirona

[Ten oz]

Flipping through the news this morning and I am seeing that Trump had a big win in NY. Headline after headline exultings Trump huge NY victory. Meanwhile on the Democratic side Clinton received double the votes that Trump received and Sanders received 50% more votes than Trump did as well. Clinton received more votes alone than all candidates combined in the NY Republican Primary. A caveat to Trump's huge win that the headlines wouldn't lead one to assume.

[imatfaal]

Flipping through the news this morning and I am seeing that Trump had a big win in NY. Headline after headline exultings Trump huge NY victory. Meanwhile on the Democratic side Clinton received double the votes that Trump received and Sanders received 50% more votes than Trump did as well. Clinton received more votes alone than all candidates combined in the NY Republican Primary. A caveat to Trump's huge win that the headlines wouldn't lead one to assume.

 

As NY allows voting in specific primary for only voters registered with said party (TTBOMK) and there are twice as many registered Democrats as there are Republican then that makes perfect sense.

 

5,792,497

2,731,688

[mp][/mp]

 

0.179 Hillary

0.190 Trump

 

Here are the proportion of registered voters that turned out for the two winners - very similar with Trump just edging it.

 

[Ten oz]

 

As NY allows voting in specific primary for only voters registered with said party (TTBOMK) and there are twice as many registered Democrats as there are Republican then that makes perfect sense.

 

5,792,497

2,731,688

[mp][/mp]

 

0.179 Hillary

0.190 Trump

 

Here are the proportion of registered voters that turned out for the two winners - very similar with Trump just edging it.

 

More people in the USA identify as democrat period; that was sort of my point.

[imatfaal]

More people in the USA identify as democrat period; that was sort of my point.

 

Funny - that's not really what you said. And many many more identify as independent.

[Ten oz]

 

Funny - that's not really what you said. And many many more identify as independent.

I pointed out that all the headlines were about Trump (GOP primary) meanwhile both Clinton ans Sanders had stronger support (Democratic primary). So I think it is what I said. Clinton has recieved two in a half million more votes than Trump and Sanders isn't far behind Trump and will most likely pass Trump as the races move west. The media is given a termendous amount of attention to the GOP but in reality Both Clinton and Sanders have stronger individual support than anyone in the GOP field.

[MigL]

Trump's advantage is that he's a 'media' personality.

He 'sells' the news.

Is it any wonder he gets a disproportionate amount of exposure ?

 

If the election was based solely on the amount of media exposure, the Democrats would have to run Kim Kardashian to win.

( the clown car would need a wider seat for that a*s )

Edited April 20, 2016 by MigL

[Ten oz]

Trump's advantage is that he's a 'media' personality.

He 'sells' the news.

Is it any wonder he gets a disproportionate amount of exposure ?

 

If the election was based solely on the amount of media exposure, the Democrats would have to run Kim Kardashian to win.

( the clown car would need a wider seat for that a*s )

I like that. In Trump the GOP basically do have a reality star on the level of a Kardashian.

[Ten oz]

We are now less than 2 months away from electing a new President on the major media headlines are focused on:

- an email scandal in which Clinton has already been exonerated.

- The personnal health of Candidates

- How transparent Clinton is

- Where Obama was born

- whether or polls are accurate

- Colin Powells personal emails

 

In my opinion the media is terrible. I am horrified by what I see. Colin Powell, whom is not a candidate for anything, was hacked and the media went ahead and aired his emails as if doing so is equal to a sitdown interview. Powell has a right to privacy. We all do. Illegally obtained emails that lack context with regards to the whole conversation or history between Powell and the receiver should not be treated like a casual Q & A. Same was done with the DNC hacks. illegally obtained information was treated with the same casually reporting one would expect when a candidate calls into a morning show.

 

There is just no journalistic standards this election season. At the "Commander In Cheif" forum Trump claimed to know from "body language" how intel specialists in our gov't feel about Obama and whether or not Obama uses their advice and since that time there hasn't been one follow up question? Trump made up (bold faced lied), not exaggerated, that he had been shown a secret video from Iran. It was laughed off and the media moved on. Trump made up (bold face lied), not exaggerated, that he received a letter from the NFL about the debates and it was laughed off. Trump won't release his tax returns, has foriegn business dealings, and foriegn owned debt yet all transparency questions are directed at Clinton. Now Trump is claiming he is done discussing whether or not Obama was born in the U.S., huh?

 

I get it ;media needs to make money. They are covering the stories that grab the most viewers but leaked private emails, not pointing out known lies, and just allowing any question(s) to be open to debate. At this point Trump could claim the World Trade center was still standing and the media just refuses to show it and the Foxnews, CNN, andMSNBC would hold panel discussion to debate whether or not that is correct.

[Memammal]

Any opinions as to why this story is not making more headline news:

Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored

[Ten oz]

"Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan.

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks."

"Kushner, dressed in a suit and sneakers, told the business executives that the campaign was upset with CNN because they considered its on-air panels stacked against Trump. He added that he personally talked with Jeff Zucker about changing the composition of the panels but Zucker refused. He repeatedly said in the panel that CNN wasn't "moving the needle" and wasn't important as it once was, according to three of the people present.

The campaign then decided not to work as closely with CNN, and Trump ramped up his bashing of the cable network."

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764

 

If outlets are directly working with political candidates should there have to be disclaimers? if a candidate or a political action committee runs an ad they have to make it known they paid for the ad yet a media conglomerate can work with a compaign and no transparency is required. Not good!