Why We Can't Trust The Media
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 11/15/2016 1:00:00 AM
It's becoming harder and harder to trust the news as it's reported these days.
It's been said that 50% or more of what is reported in the news is either accurate or misinterpreted. Unfortunately, that figure is probably wrong. That's because it was something I read on a news site that most likely was inaccurate or misreported. Do you see the problem?
The fact is, most news reporters today get their information from other sources in an endless cycle of smaller sources being quoted by larger ones, until you eventually don't have a direct connection to the original source. Because of this, when a news organization needs to fact check a story, they often can't dig enough to get the story's real origin.
To compensate for this, most fact checkers are satisfied to simply quote their source and move on so that they can make their deadlines.
Think about it, how often have you heard a news story start off with "TMZ has reported that...", or "According to Drudge Report..."? By quoting their source like this, they're completely off the hook if the story turns out to be inaccurate. After all, they told you who their source was, and often say something like "We have not been able to confirm this, but according to xyz".
When a reporter doesn't have all the facts, it's easy for him or her to simply run a story about the fact that there is an unconfirmed story. They make their deadline, and the reader / viewer / listener will decide whether they want to trust its source. Even if the source or the story is wrong, it will eventually be quoted by other news organizations and it will snowball from there.
Even honest journalists are easily duped into spreading rumors.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of publicists who are keenly aware of this problem and routinely seed smaller news blogs with inaccurate information specifically because they know that larger organizations will eventually report it.
Even if every single news organization correctly mentions that the story is an unconfirmed rumor, the damage is done.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
(Reply N/A) (Edit Topic N/A)
(Like Topic N/A) [0 ] 5321 Views
Related Posts
Media(22)News(7)
Top 25 Posts
* Note: The ideas on "Idea of the Day" were posted without any formal research into existing inventions.
In some cases, patents may already exist for these ideas, in other cases, there may not be any existing patents and you are free to develop and explore the viability of developing and patenting the ideas.
The authors make no claim that any of the ideas are safe, practical, or suitable for any particular purpose. You are responsible for the results of trying, developing, patenting or using any of the ideas on this site.
For some people, our ideas are just an interesting read, but our goal is to encourage you to take action. If you see an idea that you like, do something with it... Take action.
- Joe
Idea of the Day!
on...