Fazor. Might as well face it - reporting has NEVER been about the facts. If it were about facts, we'd all be reading JAMA and a VERY select number of newspapers.

Fazor,

Here in Simi Valley--near the Reagan Library where the big republican shindig was held last week--the Los Angeles Daily News & the Ventura County Star have overlapping circulation, so they have their "headline-wars" at the news-stands. The former's headline was:

Reagan Wannabees

and the latter's was:

10 Agree: Rekindle Reagan Spirit


Both obviously "slanted." But try as I might, I could not think of a headline to report the event that was unslanted.

Can you?

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

sure can
Hot-air system moves in to Valley area.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"Ten white guys in suits talk about stuff"?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

:nod:

That's pretty good...

My problem is, I have a tendency to run on-and-on. For example, my headline starts out:

10 Republican Hopefuls Discover that Reagan Library is really an over-priced museum, not a library, but agree that that is what the Reagan Spirit is all about: Apperance over Reality

But when I try to shorten it, I'm back to:

10 Agree: Rekindle Reagan Spirit

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

The newsclowns are so hot to scoop each other that they pass around the same bad batches of misinformation like brown acid at Woodstock. As a former Howard Stern fan*, I heard multitudes of lame phone pranksters deliver patently ludicrous call-in reports to on air anchors, who (without checking anything) reported it as fact with a straight face. It's infotainment, but with no gaurantee of info. The only diff between CNN and a tabloid is the format and the reporters' salaries.

The sad part is not how low they'll go in pursuit of the common denominator's Neilsen viewing, but how many people take the "news" at face value.



*and then I grew up.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

correct - even when they are involved in a story and know how badly it's trashed, they seem to think "well, it's only that story", or "well, the gist was right".. and then don't apply any skepticism or even logical thought to any other story.

Me, I gave up watching CNN during the first gulf war, when the military command basically told the press "hay, don't tell anybody, but we're gonna do this" - knowing full well the press isn't trustworthy and would immediately put in on the air as gospel (whereupon the military did the right thing and kicked the hindquarters of the opponent).

Then - CNN included - all the press representatives there complained "you lied to us!" - and the response, of course, was "Yes, I did".

No, this has nothing to do with the veracity of what is reported. What it IS about is the "integrity" of the system and the people within it. I certainly don't fault the military - in a war, you use what tools are available to you to A) meet your objective B) minimize your losses and C) minimize non-combatant casualties - in that order.
The press has always been an instrument of war, though usually used for propaganda. In this case, Gen. Schwarzkoph held up a nice optically perfect mirror and proved to the world that the American press is no better than any other, and in some ways worse.

Agreed, but to lighten up a bit,

Headline: Galactic merger could boot our solar system


So the whole article is not about what the researchers found (88% change that the solar-system will not get the boot), but instead the unlikely, improbable outcome, "according to the study"

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

But what about that 3% chance that we will get stolen by Andromeda? Does that mean we have to move into a high crime area?

I really don't care that they stress the 12% instead of the 85% (dont forget the 3). What I am upset about is that they don't say why this is significant, or if (or how) it differs than what was known before it.

Only one statement here that has any "story" to it, and it is the vaguest part of the article.
How much?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

That's for the second pass, not the initial one. What the conditions are for that 3% chance aren't mentioned, though. (Does it assume that the Sun is in the tail? Or can it be anywhere?)

Yesterday morning my wife turned the TV on early then called me out of the shower because Fox News (and others) were reporting that the Empress of the North cruise ship was "sinking". link We were intersted because we once cruised the Columbia on a smaller ship from the same company and have considered going on the Empress if it wasn't so dang expensive.

Anyway, it was NOT sinking. The Coast Guard reported it was "taking on water" and the media immediately leapt to "sinking". A six degree list just isn't senstational enough!

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

If it's taking on water, it is sinking, isn't it? I mean, it's not the media's fault that people think "sinking" means "going completely under" rather than just "getting lower."

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

My dictionary does say one definition of sink means "submerged". So sinking, in that respect means that it is heading toward the state of being submerged.
Although, I do, myself equate sinking with the other definition in my dictionary of "force downward".

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Interesting. My parents left on a cruise yesterday. I hope they're not drowning (aka drinking a glass of water).

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Man accidentally shoots himself without a gun
Well, I guess this isn't bad reporting, per se. But I don't know if you can call it shooting yourself if it's an accidental discharge of open ammunition. I guess "man injures self with bullet" doesn't sound as interesting though. The thing I have issue with is, why is this on CNN's main US news page? It happens all the time. Yeah the kid was stupid to use a hammer to open bullets but he's not the first to do so. He lived. He learned. Is it really one of the most important things that happened today? I guess no news is good news, or so they say.

edit: whoops forgot to quote the article. Fixed. Thanks.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

It depends on your point-of-view.

The Pessimist: The ship was half-sunk.

The Optimist: The ship was half-afloat...only listing six degrees

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PW -- Plant Whisperer

Sinking is the act of becoming sunk. Taking on Water is how that occurs. Sometimes it takes a while, some times it happens very rapidly. In either case, a vessel that's taking on water is definitely sinking.

What I'm curious about is; why is that vessel out in the open ocean with passengers - it's a flippin' riverboat. No keel to speak of...

I've only ever seen ONE decent news program: SBS World News Australia

The rest are populist tripe

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon