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That being reported was alright, but how should I believe the rest of the things on the paper or any other paper. How I see the world today the good or bad is painted by those people, and hardly a few by what I happened to witness.
How we feel is governed by what we know, and what we know comes from the people reporting them to us, shaped and painted to be more interesting and commercially valuable. Could I be wrong in saying this?
Habtom
My college newspaper was notorious for that too and I'm starting to learn that my current local paper is like that, too.
It still amazes me that so many people believe what they read, without checking the facts for themselves. That little fact makes my blog so much more fun to write. I'd bet that a few reporters feel the same way.
It was free publicity I guess, I didn't worry about it beyond that.
As grandpa notes, reporters are as biased as the rest of us mortals, and they're earning a paycheck just like the rest of us. I try to read with that in mind.
Once when I was in a B&M business a trade paper did a article on my company.
In my bio it said I was a decorated captain in the artillery. In fact I was a corporal in the infantry and had never been awarded any medals.
Ever since I read all news with a skeptical eye. Unfortunately public opinion
is shaped by the news accurate or not.
As Will Rogers once said " Everything I know, I read in the papers"...KF
Not only do tight schedules and rushed deadlines contribute to unchecked inaccuracies but the pressure on many publications to increase circulation encourages a greater emphasis on the sensational aspects of any given story (slight though they may be) and a lesser emphasis on the more mundane aspects.
Non-profit news organisations (there are some - I think Channel 4 News is non-profit) can escape the latter but not the former.
Above all, each publication has an owner, who has a political agenda. Newspaper editors do the newspaper owners' bidding. Reporters, if they want to keep their jobs, write what their editors want to read.
And, at the end of the day, that's what you're reading.
There was a murder in a flat above my friend's place, she was very distraught and told me what had happened on the day. The next day it was reported in the newspapers, and gaps were filled in differently.
When we've had nail bombs in London, IRA bombs so many years ago, these tended to be isolated incidences. However, the newspaper headlines would report on "London Bombings" and relatives from abroad would call to find out how bad a mess London was in.
Thank goodness for the internet, as you can get a better picture of the truth from people who are there.
Often the writer of the headline isn't the writer of the article.
I have seen and continue to see "shocker" headlines that barely apply to the story. It is annoying and stupid.
A major local(to me) paper recently got in big trouble over this.
Our major sports franchise's ownership was recently in question. Some prospect owners were looking and many feared the team would leave the city.
In the middle of all the speculation and conjecture about what and who..... this paper puts out a huge front story with half the front of the paper reading...
"Sold!" with the sport team logo under it.
Now anyone walking down the street or anyone who just caught the front page of the paper would think the team was sold... I mean they put an exclamation mark rather then a question mark.. so they must have been sold right?... wrong
The article was just another in many local articles that speculated on if they would be sold and to who, but it didn't really spell out they weren't sold.
Well we take that team pretty seriously here and people started talking about how they were sold based off a headline... granted it was in bold letter and was so big it took half the front page... so they got complaints from fans and end readers... then they got taking to task by the team and the mayor.
The author blamed headline writers saying he submitted the story and they did the headline like always.
I see magazines doing the same thing... they will talk about an article on the front page but then you look in the table of contents and you don't see it mentioned because it has a totally different name.... it drives me nuts.
They are looking for shock value.... I mean Ann Coulter claims to be a news reporter... her facts are always things so out there you have to wonder what "news" really is now-a-days.
My favorite Ann quote while I am on this was about Canada and how we aren't really a country and... "we are lucky the USA doesn't roll over in it's sleep and crush us."
[edited by: Demaestro at 9:51 pm (utc) on Nov. 26, 2007]
One interesting story to note is that of Anastasia Romanov. DNA testing has proven that Anna Anderson, the most famous imposter, was not related to the Russian royal family but was most likely a Prussian (Polish) peasant who went missing about the same time "Anastasia" surfaced. Some newspapers had it right even before DNA testing. Many others did not and even overlooked the fact that by most accounts Anna Anderson didn't even know how to speak Russian.
But looking back it is interesting to note how much press Anna Anderson received during her lifetime and how many people, including journalists, she had fooled.
Often the writer of the headline isn't the writer of the article.
Almost never.
Subeditors whose job it is to lay out the page are usually the ones given the task of putting headlines on the articles. Otherwise the editor will do it. It's very rarely the job of the reporter who wrote the article to give it a headline.
Ann. Coulter. :o
Saw her on television a couple of times while on a vacation once... She sooo rubbed me the wrong way that I still want to go out and kick puppies - that's how poisonous she is.
[edited by: Jane_Doe at 4:14 pm (utc) on Nov. 27, 2007]
