As some of you may know, a suspect has been arrested, booked, and held on 10 million dollars bond for 10 slayings purported to be the work of theBTK. Thread here. Why the fuck is the media posting that Dennis Radar confessed the night of his arrest, when a few breaths later they quote the DA as saying “Your information is patently false.” All it does is create confusion, not relay facts.
I want FACTS damn it! For example, I don’t even trust that this quote from the article is truth:
now. This is bullshit. Just do your fucking jobs, get the facts when you can, and report them truthfully, don’t “spice it up” for us, it’s already enough that such a “boogeyman” may truly be captured at last. I hate that this is so common now, (and not just with murder trials) that the media feels it “must report something” often, even though that something may later be retracted, be patently false, and cause confusion in it’s readers. Just so long as it entertains, right? BAH! :mad: I’m sure you all can come up with other examples of this style of news reporting too. Feel free to add your rants about such incidents here.
I know what you mean. At first, they were reporting his daughter turned him in. Then the next day, it was information she provided. Then the next day, she didn’t really do anything, they came to her and asked for DNA samples. WTF???
On a side note, anytime I’ve had first-hand knowledge of anything that was reported in the news the information reported bore only a vague resemblance to what actually happened, and was completely erroneous as to both facts and location. I came to believe the media don’t really give a damn about accuracy as long as they have something to report that they think people will listen to.
The entrenching tool. I’ll never forget the entrenching tool. The first full news day after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered, the Los Angeles Times stated that the weapon appeared to have been an entrenching tool, and explained what one was. Never mentioned again.
His daughter? I heard it was somebody who watched “America’s Most Wanted.” Of course, that was according to John Walsh and he seems to take credit for every arrest made in this fair land.
I think the problem is that the media is not really in business to keep us informed - they’re in business to compete with other media companies for advertising and subscription revenue; thus, the “must publish something” mentality.
I love Phil Hendrie’s “How To Read A News Story” segment. He deconstructs, line by line, “shocking” and “provocative” news stories and shows how, through simple rhetorical exaggeration and fantastical speech, they can get “nothing” to sound like “Crime Of The Century!”
I’m glad I don’t pay attention to breaking news. I like to wait until a day or two has gone by, and then I compare various stories. If there’s wildly conflictin data from two different sources, I usually sit on it and wait for more time to go by.
A recent sensational crime report was a couple of days ago where the local crime reporter decribed an assault and rape of a woman as a “blitz”.
<paraphrazing> “The unsuspecting victim was blitzed, beaten and sexually assaulted…”
WTF? You smarmy fucking sleezeball! Assault and rape is not sensational enough for your report? You gotta jazz it up for your fans with something glitzy?!!! :mad: