Is the media irreparably broken

[dreunc1542]

The scholarly research done on newspaper accuracy from 1936 through 2005 found that the percentage of inaccuracies stayed pretty consistent in that time. Doing accuracy research in the current environment is a lot more difficult because of the different platforms on which news is disseminated, and the fact that online stories are often changed multiple times throughout the day.

 

[Boom_70]

Pete Williams is a bright and highly respected TV news man for NBC News. He must cringe when he knows that he needs to take questions from the dunce squad manning the booth at MSNBC

 

[Versatile]

Interesting thought.

But then, there are 323,000 results for a "Brett Farve" search on Google. Sure is easy, though.

I doubt a 1950 fact check (Almanac, Encyclopedia, whatever) would turn up an incorrect spelling of a famous person's name.

What search engine are you using? Google and Bing both correct it for you and tell you they're correcting it.

But yeah, the Internet is evil.

 

[Riptide]

Pete Williams is a bright and highly respected TV news man for NBC News. He must cringe when he knows that he needs to take questions from the dunce squad manning the both at MSNBC

Booth of them? Booth of them in the both?

Dunces!

 

[BillyT]

I'm still not entirely sure what Reddit is.

Neither am I, honestly.

I once figured I'd like it because it's kind of a message board and hey, I like message boards, right? But I'm too dumb to navigate it easily, I guess, because I can't ever seem to figure out what's going on. But, at least I didn't accuse multiple innocent people of being terrorists all the while mocking the "traditional media" for being slow and stupid, only to be wrong over and over again.

Then you oughta go look it up, just as you should when you see any media outlet you are not faimilar with mentioned.

 

[Fredrick]

It's not journalism what we're seeing. Not when every morsel of information is given the same weight without context.

It's not journalism.
It's televised ejaculations.

It's happened on all forms of media, not just television.

Also, as discussed on other threads - journalists have misreported major pieces of information in the heat of big crises for a long time. Now, though, instead of just the wires and a few TV stations being able to report information as it happens, basically everyone can.

There are definitely issues about coverage of breaking news that need to be addressed, but I also think it's short-sighted to act as if the rush to be first and beat the competition is something new to recent news coverage.

The part in bold is the key issue here. The race to be first on a story hasn't changed. What has is that when a reporter gets a tip or a lead, instead of having time to check it out before deadline or air time, he or she makes it public immediately simply because there is now a way to do so.

And that is the danger of Twitter, etc. Instead of being encouraged to check facts, reporters are encouraged to post information first and check it out later. And much of that "information" turns out to be completely wrong.

Was working on a story recently, to confirm something reported elsewhere. Waiting to hear back from several calls/emails/texts and was writing while waiting.

Editor calls and wants an update. I explain situation. Editor didn't want to hear it. Response: "Look, we have to post something now."

Didn't care that I didn't have it confirmed at that point. Might have been the most frustrating day in my career.

Well, what did you do? As a good reporter, which you are I'm sure, you can't put something up unless you get it confirmed. Did you keep trying or figure a way to put it up? And where did he want it up first? The editors' beloved Twitter? Or your website?

 

[TigerVols]

I can see the print business quickly becoming right-wing dominated like radio was over the past 25 years. First the San Diego papers, and now the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune are being targeted by ultra-conservative owners:

http://www.deadline.com/2013/04/koch-brothers-tribune-newspaper-sale/

Makes perfect business sense, because fewer and fewer young and urban people are reading print papers anymore, but older, white, upper and upper middle class people seem to still turn to the morning paper for their news and information. But I don't think anyone (besides the usual contrarians) can argue right-wing radio brings strong journalism to the table, and it won't surprise me that by the time my obit is published, we'll be saying the same thing about the paper that publishes it.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

The New York Post loses a ton of money. The Washington Times loses a ton of money. Turning all Tribune Co.'s papers into overtly ideological papers would be a nifty way to lose staggering sums of money. If, as Murdoch did with the Wall Street Journal, they just ran right wing editorials and columnists and left the newsside alone, they might make it work. But I wonder if that's what they want.

 

[ringer]

I don't understand why all the TV media outlets need to have a reporter standing behind a barricade on a random street corner that nobody can identify near the scene of the action. Can't they just have one sane, sober (adult) person anchor it from the studio and let reporters on the scene rove around and actually do some real reporting and news-gathering and relay it to HQ?

Friday night's two-hour no-commercial prime-time "we think they have the suspect" coverage was ridiculous -- with a hundred idle cops in the background doing nothing and clearly NOT at the scene.

It's no wonder that "the media" are so easily parodied.

 

[Here me roar]

I don't understand why all the TV media outlets need to have a reporter standing behind a barricade on a random street corner that nobody can identify near the scene of the action. Can't they just have one sane, sober (adult) person anchor it from the studio and let reporters on the scene rove around and actually do some real reporting and news-gathering and relay it to HQ?

Friday night's two-hour no-commercial prime-time "we think they have the suspect" coverage was ridiculous -- with a hundred idle cops in the background doing nothing and clearly NOT at the scene.

It's no wonder that "the media" are so easily parodied.

Well, granted, the talking head reporters were just standing there. If you were listening to the police scanner you would also know that deep into the Friday coverage, the police had to scramble because there were reporters who had found a back, unguarded way that landed them close to the backyard with the boat.
To think that the media was just standing there is to believe that only ONE reporter and ONE camera crew from any of the many media outlets covering were there.
Clearly, that is wrong.

 

[BTExpress]

The New York Post loses a ton of money. The Washington Times loses a ton of money.

Well, they are competing against the two greatest newspapers in the nation.

That likely has something to do with it.

 

[Drip]

When tweets from injured players during playoff games become more important than the game itself, it's a sure sign that journalism - as many of us know it - is gone.