For some time I have been concerned about the contemporary mainstream media practice of including content that journalists know to be untrue in their stories. The situation frequently arises when a public figure says untrue and is then quoted, without a qualifying statement, by the media outlet. To feign ignorance or simply fail to deal with such untruths, at least to me, seems to undermine the utility of the whole venture of journalism.
For quite a while I have had the sense that this is an issue that has been completely sidestepped by the mainstream medeia. They just aren't interested in dealing with the issue and challenges that would be sure to crop up if such an approach were to be adopted.
My opinions on the issue aside, it seems that today an editor at the New York Times finally wondered if their readers were interested in having reporters actually try to alert readers of known falsehoods or claims of questionable validity.
Perhaps not surprisingly, at least based on an assessment of the article's highest rated comments, readers do seem to be interested in having their news sources call out politicians when they tell lies. Most people seem to think that a news source isn't much of a news source if it doesn't accomplish this basic task.
Anyway, though the story was only posted this morning more than 250 comments have been logged and commenting further commenting has now been halted.
I suspect that they have attracted more of a response to this piece than they expected.
Anyway, I am curious to see how the paper responds to this uproar (as the editor's piece leaves the impression that they knowingly include false statements that they make no effort to correct in their paper on a regular basis). Given the immediate web uproar surely at least a follow-up comment will be made?
On the Media lead me to this response to the original NYT piece.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment