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« Meanwhile, back in the US, the "free press" reigns supreme. | Main | Thanks, Ms. Lauren. »
More on "free" press
March 31, 2004
Tom Tomorrow reports on how urban legends are so easily spread around the news:
As a reader suggested, Friedman probably feels justified in not correcting his t-shirt anecdote because he's simply relaying what someone else heard. If I write, "A man on the street told me that Tom Friedman's columns are written by a team of trained monkeys," then the only factual assertion is that this is what some guy on the street told me, and I guess I have no obligation to set the record straight. Even if it is repeatedly pointed out to me that Tom Friedman actually does write his own columns, and doesn't even own a single trained monkey.
I guess my theme for the day is pisspoor reporting, and how it fucks with our perceptions. I'm sure it's always existed, but I've noticed the insidiousness of it since the war began. Someone will report a half-truth or an outright lie as fact or opinion, and that story carries, but the correction does not. Items are omitted and quotes are taken out of context. And the casual news-listening public doesn't hear the whole story.
I'm sure I can load this up with more links, and perhaps I will later when I'm not busy feeling stressed and overburdened over here.
Bloggin is, after all, my HOBBY, not a paying profession like it is for the goobers who are fucking things up in the media.
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Comments
A really good source for examples of what you're talking about (which was my own introduction to the idea that the media are deeply flawed), is Backlash by Susan Faludi. I've been re-reading bits of it lately and it is such a good book. Anyway, she gives a lot of examples of lies or half-truths that were shouted from the rooftops followed by a few tiny retractions on the back pages of papers when they were disproven. The most striking is the statistic about how a single, college-educated woman of whatever age group (over 35 maybe?) was more likely to be hit by a truck than to get married. You still hear that one bandied about now and again, despite its being totally debunked almost immediately after it was first mentioned.