This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. Often when the media wants to say something that they can’t in any way back up with facts, they will use a quote from some moron off the street. These quotes are often run without any rebuttal. Most recently, in an article about medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles, the LA Times quoted “residents” being concerned about rising crime due to the dispensaries. Any evidence for that? Of course not. But it is easy enough to find some old coot that thinks that the Devil Weed will make somebody go out and rape the white wimmens, or whatever. They do this all the time. Find some ignorant moke to make a quote or give a sound bite, and presto! You can tell a lie without having to back up your assertions with any evidence. After all, we are telling you something true! This guy said something! And the average news consumer takes it at face value. The teevee is especially guilty, but the print “journalists” do it all the time too.
What you will never hear: “The person you just saw is a moron and completely wrong about what they said.”
During the General Strike of 1926 my late father was in charge of the running of Mount Pleasant sorting office. The undelivered mail there became piled to the ceiling, so he put a man on guard to protect it. Later a journalist or photographer came and asked if he could photograph this scene. After permission was given he then asked the guard if he would mind stepping aside in order for him to take the photograph and he duly obliged. When the early evening newspaper came out the boards in the streets announced “Royal Mail left unattended”.
The Faux News headlines that news.google.com puts up for me are often like this. “Critics assail Obama medical plan as financially unsound.” or somesuch.
Yeah, back when I was a poor single mother of a sweet little boy, it used to righteously piss me off that whenever the prestigeous MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, on respected public television, wanted to do a story on “welfare reform” vis-a-vis the New World Order, they would get the biggest, fattest, most ignorant-and-multiple-runny-noseded-children-having welfare mother they could possibly find, and trot her out to say something stupid & selfish for the cameras.
I always figured that they just weren’t expecting us welfare mothers to be watching the news on public television. Too busy sitting on the couch eating bonbons. Somebody in the California government at the time, in talking to the press about a $20 reduction in AFDC checks, actually said, “Hey, it’s just one less sixpack.”
(Funny, that’s what your mom said!)
I loved how they all started off saying, “Everyone agrees that the welfare system just isn’t working” BEFORE there was any public discourse on the topic. … Oh, you mean “everyone who’s anyone!”
Jon Stewart once did a “somesay” montage of Fucks News. They’ll preface any wild-ass statement they want with “Some say…” Makes no difference whether anyone outside of FN has ever uttered such a thing.
Lately, the MSM has taken the next step. any criticism of FN’s blatant distortion of fact must be balanced with an identical criticism of MSNBC’s slightly-left-of-center commentary clearly labeled as such.
I think Jurnos today have a specific need to put a “Face” on each crime or story, and this has lead to sloppy reporting.
For instance, the Fort Hood Shooting, they will say “So, and so, decided to go into the Army instead of Princeton.” As if to say, the other people who were to stupid to get into college and had no choice but to go into the Army somehow have less value.
Or the woman, with four kids, was shot and killed. As if she had been childless it wouldn’t have been such a big deal.
It’s the chronic need and the push to “Identify” each story with a particular feeling, plus the fact now that reporters are hemmed in by political correctness, that leaves the viewer feeling frustrated