The clucking heads on CNN believe there needs to be a “crackdown” on bloggers who spread lies and misinformation:
“There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side,” Roberts said. “Imagine what would have happened if we hadn’t taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said.”
But Phillips replied that the mainstream media “can’t always do that.”
“There’s going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable,” Phillips said. “How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they’re actually given credibility, which is crazy. They’re a bunch of cowards, they’re just people seeking attention.”
Point number one: I can imagine what would have happened had the media –of which CNN is a large part– hadn’t “plumbed the depths further,” because they didn’t. No major news outlet did. They ran with the story put forth by a blogger without looking into it one tiny little bit until it became obvious they didn’t actually have the whole story. A woman who was doing a great job in her position with the USDA was asked to resign. That’s what happened when they didn’t bother to fact check and plumb those depths. Hell, they didn’t even dip their toes into the fresh water of facts.
Point number two: Why would the media not be able to fact check? That would be an integral part of the job of being a journalist. First one checks the facts of a story, and THEN one reports the facts. One doesn’t report bullshit and then eventually take the time to make sure it isn’t bullshit, at least not if one wants to be considered a journalist/reporter. Presumably, the clucking heads at CNN want to be thought of as journalists and reporters, right? Then they better find time to do their jobs. Doesn’t matter if every other news organization on the planet is reporting the sky is blood red, if it isn’t true, why bother reporting it? Oh yeah, ratings! Who cares about facts!
Point number three: Breitbart isn’t an anonymous blogger. His name is totally plastered all over everything he does, and what he does is spread lies and misinformation. For anyone, let alone a news organization (or the NAACP or the US government) to believe anything he says without thoroughly vetting it is the height of stupidity. How many times does someone have to feed them bullshit while calling it prime rib before they begin to get suspicious of taking the plate and gobbling it down? So CNN and every other media outlet sucked down the bullshit Breitbart was serving up, but now it’s anonymous bloggers that are the problem.
There’s an easier solution to the problem of bloggers spreading misinformation than to attempt to regulate the online speech of millions of people: hold news organizations accountable for not checking into the veracity of the stories they report. There are far fewer of them to regulate and hold accountable, and it is, after all, THEIR JOB TO REPORT FACTS. If they wouldn’t be reading blogs, taking everything they read on the internet as god’s given truth without doing just the barest minimum of fact checking, and then running to the nearest camera to breathlessly spread the word –or bullshit, as it may be– the Sherrod incident wouldn’t have happened, at least not quite like it did.
Is Brietbart to blame for tossing bullshit out there? Yes, but mainstream media is responsible for the story getting spread worldwide and the subsequent stupidities that followed, and we should expect better from CNN (and the other major news outlets) than we do from any blogger (most especially Breitbart) … what with reporting factual news stories BEING THEIR JOB and all.
Can you tell I am still somewhat inflamed about this?
A British newspaper just decided to get in on the act, reporting as fact a hoax about a new Grand Theft Auto game based on a man who shot a woman.
They didn’t once think to put in a call to the company who produce GTA before going to press, but they did call the victim’s family. I felt a whole new kind of despair on learning this.
“… what with reporting factual news stories BEING THEIR JOB and all.”
There exists no such mandate for a cable ‘news’ network. Even if the FCC had authority, there would be no enforcement, owing to the ‘understanding’ that has long existed between Washington and the national broadcast companies. The primary responsibility is to maximize shareholder profit and executive bonuses. It would reformat to the “Lost Dog Channel” tomorrow were it perceived there was more money to be made.
The whining about webloggers is some exec’s rant in anticipation of the demise of cable television entertainment, at least the kind that draws in middle class spenders. Look how free broadcast television programming has already devolved to pandering to the lower rungs of economic status: beauty colleges, no credit check title loans, rent-a-center furniture and chrome rims, acrylic fingernails. Where I live the free channels are 70% Jesus or Spanish or both. The ones that aren’t in those two categories are still pretty much programming for the dropped out or kicked out classes. People with significant disposible cash (or who think they have) are getting their infotainment via newer technologies and they are the ones to whom the Lexus commercials are aimed. Big ticket advertisers see cable TV as heading in the same direction as free TV and don’t see any point wasting money there, even on sports, which is losing its ability to anchor networks and cable providers.
I predict it will get progressively worse. The nature of culture precludes any other outcome.
We avoid watching any programming on a network that can be received with an antenna. 95% of it just never interested us, so we set up the couple of shows we like (Chuck, mostly) and never, ever flip to those channels. Well, Sunday evening, there was nothing at all on to watch, and we’d watched all the recorded stuff, and somehow we ended up catching a few minutes of some STUPID show on some network. OMG.
As we both sat on the couch sneering and wondering who would find this crap at all entertaining, the thought we both had at the same time was “Wow. We’re living in that movie Idiocracy.”
And yes, even the education cable networks we have always loved are beginning to fall prey to the lowest common denominator kind of programming. We’re getting pretty disillusioned with television, and pretty soon, we’ll be getting our programming elsewhere … like Netflix and iTunes. I’ve worked it out, and for what we pay for a thousand channels of stuff we only want to watch a few hours of every week, we could pay less to just get the stuff we actually want to watch through other means.
And cable news is just rot these days. All of it. Unless there’s some kind of major world crisis with things blowing up, there’s no reason at all to turn it on. If I wanted to hear a bunch of people speculating about things they haven’t researched, I’d read more blogs and listen to more podcasts.
LMAO Fact Check? :dizzy:
That would mean several extra minutes of research. Which, BTW, would cut into their Dark Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino time. Silly girl :bounce: