Post by atownbeaver on Sept 16, 2020 15:00:40 GMT -8
"Also, a rule of thumb is that, when you read "unnamed source," 99% of the time it means that the reporter is making it up" No, they almost never make it up, and when they do and get found out they get fired. News people can be wrong, but calling it fake news is the the way all dictators manage to end democracy's. I like living in a democracy, so please don't say stuff like that.
Link.
Please identify all of the news people that got fired over the reporting on Covington Catholic.
Please identify all of the news people that got fired over the reporting on Jussie Smollett.
This Intercept article provides a good rundown of 20 times between the 2016 election and January 2019 that the media got it wrong and the times that Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff and Democratic Senators have joined in and fanned the flames of nonsense. (And they threw in Rachel Maddow's tax return debacle for fun!) By my count, only two mention any repercussions to the false reporting.
Dictators end democracies by ending democracies. They silence the news by taking over the news and passing of their news as that news. I am no dictator, and I am telling you that a lot of the nonsense in what is commonly called the mainstream news is fake, inflammatory and just plain wrong. Real news includes verifiable sources, names, dates, recordings, things in writing, etc. It does not include an unnamed source somehow tangentially related to someone, who might actually know something.
I love living in a democracy. But a democracy dies, when we cannot all agree on the truth. The constant nonsense coming from the mainstream "media" does not aid in the ability to arrive at anything remotely true. To put another way, if the media continues to cry wolf, when there is no wolf, none of us on the other side will be in a position to help you, when the wolf actually appears. To put still another way, there are several fires burning across the West and a hurricane inching its way over the Southeast, but what is the "news" reporting on? If you is anything other than fires and hurricanes, I would posit that you are not watching news. You are watching something else entirely.
I am taking the outlandish position that, if this democracy is to survive, we all must demand a better and more accountable media, one that will actually report on newsworthy events, rather than flat out making stuff up. Please join me.
Media is dominated by freelance blogging and fly-by-night reporting all competing to go viral and get the scoop. Media became it's own worse enemy in the struggle to remain viable and profitable. Being slow to move off of print, slow to go on line put them behind and they were stuck playing catch up.
There are still trustworthy sources and reports you can trust with "unnamed sources" but I know longer believe as a general principle, you can have faith in the credibility of an unnamed source.