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.
Re: The Press sucks
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.
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.
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.
Re: The Press sucks
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?