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In light of the Coal Miner tragedy that recently happened, it has been suggested that the press has illegal wire taps at their disposal to infiltrate cell phone conversations (yours and mine) for their own usage in an attempt to generate stories before their competitors. I knew the press always sucked.

And I'm sure there are well-grounded human beings who are in the industry to be the best reporter, editor, anchor, etc, etc, w/o crossing the line. But after what just happened, the industry just proves what a crock of s**t they are overall, and afterall for that matter.

If what I said is true in the first paragraph, it's also a direct violation of the first amendment.

Anyone agree?

Not really. A lot of the blame has to go to the executives/owners of the coal mine and their handling of the rescue efforts.

* waiting for a disaster to "naturally" occur in this country without an epidemic of outside blame*

Originally posted by botankus
* waiting for a disaster to "naturally" occur in this country without an epidemic of outside blame*

Hooooooold on just a second. I was referring to the time period in which the family members thought the miners were alive as something deserving blame. The disaster itself was obviously an accident.

There was still blame over the course of the event, then.

Yup, America places money above morals and values. That's the reason everybody went there in the first place.

If you want to live decently, then you should all unite and put up a government 'for the people by the people!'

Actually all of the blame lies with the owners of the coal mine. The press had absolutely NOTHING to do with the false information being given to the loved ones. They just reported on it as soon as the loved ones were told. Get your facts straight before you make an accusation.

Did they? No official announement was made at any point, which is why some media outlets avoided the mistake.

Actually it WAS an official announcement,. The misinformation came DIRECTLY from the company itself. Was their screwup and no one elses. And then they sat on the misinformation for a full 3 hours after they found out they had screwed up. I did however find it surprising that they admitted they were totally to blame. Alot of companies would have tried to bury it or pass the buck.

Well, my info could be incorrect, Jedi Priestess. But, I did hear the controversial story break on CNN....alleging the press may have done illegal wire tapping to get the info. It's fishy is all I'll say.

Then why would the company go public and assume all the blame? I think you may be mistaken.

That may be Jedi Priestess. However, there were several notable newspapers that carried the message of 12 miners who were alive. You have to ask yourself why did this happen? Wouldn't it be logical to wait for sure until they had all the facts before production commenced. What would motivate one paper to print the story first over the other? At 2 am (guessing on time here), when printing processes are shutting down to get the last articles out for the next day's paper, why wouldn't they just wait an extra day?....instead of printing that there were 12 miners recovered alive? The truth finally realized, about 12 of the 13 being dead broke out after production of the newspapers had already happened? You may be right, but after seeing how the press handled their hand, even if someone else was responsible for giving the accurate info combined that CNN did a brief story about press allegations, makes this guy quite suspicious.

OK on the news that night, news of the mistake didnt break until around 2 am. Im assuming that the newspapers either A. Had alredy printed the wrong info or B. were irresponsible here. Im speaking of the television media tho. I confess I dont know how the print media handeled it.

Yeah, the media didn't have anything to do with the mistake. I actually wuz watching cnn when the story broke out, it was a bunch a people telling Anderson Cooper that 12 miners were alive. And i thnk i wasnt until 3 am or so that they found out that, that wasnt the case.

Originally posted by overlord
Yup, America places money above morals and values. That's the reason everybody went there in the first place.

If you want to live decently, then you should all unite and put up a government 'for the people by the people!'


Yeah I forgot the rest of the world lives on altruism.......lol.........the media most of the time does suck doesn't matter where or who produces it unless its me cuz I state only the truth the HOLE truth and nothing BUTT the truth.

Well, at least one press source that was careful and did not make the mistake have directly cited the lack of an official announcement as their reason for caution.

The information might have sourced from the area the company was working, but they did not actually issue it.

Originally posted by BobbyD
At 2 am (guessing on time here), when printing processes are shutting down to get the last articles out for the next day's paper

In the UK at least, 'tomorrow's' paper is in some shops as early as 22:00 the night before.

i think the media is to blame for many things, this isn't one of them. sure they spread bullshit lies, they harras people constantly and are damn annoying, but this was an accident. the company wore the blame for giving the wrong information, the media had nothing to do with it.

Yup, I agree! The media just needs to leave these people the **** alone though!

Originally posted by tabby999
i think the media is to blame for many things, this isn't one of them. sure they spread bullshit lies, they harras people constantly and are damn annoying, but this was an accident. the company wore the blame for giving the wrong information, the media had nothing to do with it.

exactly

Right, Jedi Priestess. I think we're talking about two different things here. And, it's probably my fault since I came across ambiguous. I am referring to the print media-that type of press. The allegations were did they do illegal wire taps to get their info, and then print the articles....am not referring to who botched up the how many are alive, dead thing.

Originally posted by BobbyD
In light of the Coal Miner tragedy that recently happened, it has been suggested that the press has illegal wire taps at their disposal to infiltrate cell phone conversations (yours and mine) for their own usage in an attempt to generate stories before their competitors. I knew the press always sucked.

And I'm sure there are well-grounded human beings who are in the industry to be the best reporter, editor, anchor, etc, etc, w/o crossing the line. But after what just happened, the industry just proves what a crock of s**t they are overall, and afterall for that matter.

If what I said is true in the first paragraph, it's also a direct violation of the first amendment.

Anyone agree?


I assume this thread had gone a bit off topic, considering that your question had nothing to do with whose fault the accident was? Correct?

If your statement is true, then the press have no right to run any news stories about teh Bush administration okaying wire taps or internet monitoring, without a permit. That would make the media hypocrits.

Correct, Cap'n Fantastic. I was a little vague in conveying my real thoughts.

Originally posted by BobbyD
Correct, Cap'n Fantastic. I was a little vague in conveying my real thoughts.

Actually, it was fairly easy to figure out. The topic just got skewed.

Oh? Well thank you, then.

Maybe someone is as weird as I am?

The bottom line is the press sucks anyway.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060105/ts_usatoday/mediaforcedtoexplaininaccuratereportsontragedy


By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY
Thu Jan 5, 7:19 AM ET



Newspapers, wire services and cable news networks all failed in one degree or another to do their jobs properly when they reported that 12 men had survived the coal mine disaster in West Virginia, media critics and chastened editors say.

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The collective failure was most apparent Wednesday morning on front pages across the nation. Headlines, including in about 45% of USA TODAY's 2.2 million copies, proclaimed the miners were alive. Other newspapers that put similar reports on their front pages in at least some editions include The New York Times, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis and The Washington Post. (Related item: A note to our readers)


Mike Fetters, a spokesman for The Newseum, a Washington, D.C.-based museum about the media, says that slightly more than half of the 250 U.S. newspapers examined Wednesday by the staff at the museum published front-page stories that said the miners were alive.


Few of those stories raised doubts about the report's credibility. Most did not make clear to readers, for instance, that the news was based on secondhand accounts from family members of the trapped miners just before midnight ET Tuesday. Officials from the company that owned the mine had not confirmed that the men were alive.


In truth, as cable news viewers learned about 3 a.m. ET Wednesday, only one man survived the tragedy in Tallmansville, W.Va.


Greg Mitchell, editor of the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, called the media's performance "disturbing and disgraceful" in an online column Wednesday morning.


"The job of reporters and editors is to stop and say 'we've got some possible good news, but it's not confirmed yet,' " Mitchell said later Wednesday in an interview. "That really didn't happen."


Mitchell thinks reporters and editors "got carried away" by what appeared to be miraculous news. Newspapers were also under deadline pressure, he said. Many were in the process of printing Wednesday's edition as the news was breaking.


Mitchell does not exempt cable news networks from his criticism: For three hours, "all of them were reporting, without qualification, that the miners were safe," he said.


Jack Shafer, media critic at the online magazine Slate, said the episode "should underscore to readers that we in the media are fallible. Ours is a flawed business."


Many editors said the incident is prompting self-examinations in their newsrooms.


John Hillkirk, an executive editor at USA TODAY, said the editors there "are talking to everybody involved" in the story's reporting and editing "to scrutinize the way we covered it." The newspaper will publish a correction in Thursday's editions and at www.usatoday.com.


At usatoday.com, editors relied on reports from The Associated Press as the story developed - meaning the website followed the news as it turned from miracle to tragedy.


"This is not a good day for news organizations," said George de Lama, deputy managing editor for news at the Chicago Tribune, where 373,000 of Wednesday's 656,000 copies went to readers with a front-page story stating the miners had survived. At his newspaper, "we're all sick about this...conversations are underway across the newsroom on how to prevent it from happening again."


At the Star Tribune, all 325,000 copies of Wednesday's newspaper reported that the miners were alive. "All of us in the business need to do some sorting out today about what we actually knew and from which sources," Scott Gillespie, the newspaper's managing editor, said Wednesday.


Many newspapers published accounts produced by the Associated Press, which first reported at 11:52 p.m ET Tuesday that "family members" said the 12 miners were alive. But by 12:25 a.m. ET Wednesday, AP had dropped the attribution to family members from the first paragraph of its main story on the mine disaster.


The service had added a quote from West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who said "they told us they have 12 alive." But it was not clear who Manchin was referring to when he said "they." He told USA TODAY Wednesday that he "never confirmed" to any media that the miners were alive.


Mike Silverman, the AP's managing editor, said in a statement Wednesday it "was reporting accurately the information that we were provided by credible sources - family members and the governor. Clearly, as time passed and there was no firsthand evidence the miners were alive, the best information would have come from mine company officials, but they chose not to talk."

The AP also reported Wednesday that Manchin had said he heard the miners were alive from "rescue people."

Cable news networks defended their work. Jonathan Klein,. president of CNN U.S., said "two pretty good sources" had appeared to confirm the news - Manchin and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (news, bio, voting record), R-W.Va. At 12:28 a.m. ET Wednesday, CNN broadcast an interview with Capito. Asked what she could confirm, Capito said "12 miners (are) alive."

Len Downie, executive editor of the The Washington Post, defended the media. "Our story was a reflection of what was being said at the time," said Downie. "I don't regard it as our error, but as an error by the people in charge of the rescue."

The Post's account, which stated flatly that the miners "were found alive," also appeared in many other newspapers that subscribe to the Post's news service.

One newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, says it was able to destroy copies of an early edition that carried the erroneous report. "Every copy of today's Los Angeles Times" that went to newsstands and subscribers "carried the correct information about the mine disaster," David Garcia,. the newspaper's spokesman, said in an e-mail.

LMAO@the Governor denying everything. Why am I not surprised. Terrible this thing was all the way around concerning all parties I think.

The press are just parasites feeding off other peoples suffering. And the real sad thing is the poeple who read listen too and beleive some of the lies and crap the press produce. Especially the British tabloids

not all press are lie mongering parasites, the British tabloids have a tendency too be, mainly because there is so many of them in such a small place. in Australia we have The Age, generally a fine newspaper that dosn't get all one sided on everything. the only problem with it is that it's a broadsheet and you need a frigging dining table to read it, hence so many people going for things like the Herald Sun (myself included) because its a tabloid, easier to read quickly over breakfast and has lightharted storys surrounded by (what is essencially) shit. its the Womans Weekly of papers.

The media are what they are to be sure, but the fact is without them, we'd know next to nothing about what was going on in the owrld.

Yeah, I'd say The Press sucks.

What a sh*t concept for a superhero.

"Oh look at me, I'm The Press, I can push thumb tacks into walls and iron pants"

Gaaaaaay..........

Originally posted by BobbyD
In light of the Coal Miner tragedy that recently happened, it has been suggested that the press has illegal wire taps at their disposal to infiltrate cell phone conversations (yours and mine) for their own usage in an attempt to generate stories before their competitors. I knew the press always sucked.

And I'm sure there are well-grounded human beings who are in the industry to be the best reporter, editor, anchor, etc, etc, w/o crossing the line. But after what just happened, the industry just proves what a crock of s**t they are overall, and afterall for that matter.

If what I said is true in the first paragraph, it's also a direct violation of the first amendment.

Anyone agree?

have u ever read digital fortress? wait......ya i think it was digital fortress, its a dan brown book. Everything that is sent over the internet such as AIM, MSN and YAHOO! stuff is in a database somewhere. It's effective in helpign catch criminals and would be murderers, but it still invades privacy. I know from personal experience that they read everything we type.

In large cities, Americans are photographed on the average of 20 times a day.
Everything you charge is in a database that police, among others, can look at.
Supermarkets track what you purchase and sell the information to direct-mail marketing firms.
Your employer is allowed to read your E-Mail, and if you use your company's health insurance to purchase drugs, your employer has access to that information.
Government computers scan your E-Mail for subversive language.
Your cell phone calls can be intercepted, and your access numbers can be cribbed by eavesdroppers with police scanners.
You register your whereabouts every time you use an ATM, credit card, or use EZ PASS at a toll booth.
You are often being watched when you visit web sites. Servers know what you're looking at, what you download, and how long you stay on a page.
A political candidate found his career destroyed by a newspaper that published a list of all the videos he had ever rented.
Most "baby monitors" can be intercepted 100 feet outside the home.
Intelligence agencies now have "micro-bots" -- tiny, remote control, electronic "bugs" that literally can fly into your home and look around without your noticing.
Anyone with $100 can tap your phone.
a new technology called TEMPEST can intercept what you are typing on your keypad (from 100 feet away through a cement wall.)
the National Security Agency has a submarine that can intercept and decipher digital communications from the RF emissions of underwater phone cables.

interesting?

Lovely.