"News" As fact checkers

[jackfaire]

So something that's popped up a lot lately is some media personalities I refuse to call them reporters. Are pissed because reporters (that supposedly do the same job) are expecting them to do the job of reporting if they are going to claim they are a journalist.

Specifically when it comes to fact checking. Apparently many of these people have decided it's their job to tell you what this that or the other person says but it's my job to go try and find out if that's a lie. Never mind the fact I have responsibilities of my own. The incredibly odd thing is that this shift to "I am not responsible for the veracity of what I tell you about" seems to come about on the heels of not needing them for the part where people tell us shit.

If you're just going to parrot what the person you're "interviewing" says then we can just go to their Twitter feed I don't need you for that. But for calling them on their bullshit and uncovering the truth that's the entirety of your job it's why freedom of the press is in the fucking constitution.

[HYHYBT]

There aren't many who could call people on their bullshit and still have anyone willing to be interviewed.

[jackfaire]

There aren't many who could call people on their bullshit and still have anyone willing to be interviewed.

There used to be. Not in a "Oh you kids get off my lawn" kind of way. But coming up as a kid that's what they taught in journalism class your job wasn't gossip you didn't just spread around the same bullshit the people were spreading. You called them on it if need be and you made sure your readers/viewers knew what the facts were even if they were uncomfortable facts. People understood "Hey I am totally gonna get fact checked by this reporter so I should totally make sure my facts are right"

It wasn't just some reporters who did this it was how shit was done.

Now the only News Shows and I can't believe I am saying this. That call people on misleading statements and point out what the truth is are all classified as comedy shows.

John Oliver's show not only fact checks people but they spend months and weeks extensively researching every topic before going to air with it. While it's funny it's also informative. The Daily Show, Full Frontal they do shows where they interview people point out the ridiculousness and they still get interviews from people who know what their shows are.

My local news tells me what's on my local Twitter feed.

It's not just about "gotcha" Journalism either but really anything.

A personal example to clarify my point. There are fires. That's why we have fire departments

In my city there was a vacant building that caught fire. The key word is vacant. News media reported the facts as the fire fighters knew when it went to air then as of yet I haven't seem them report on again like you know was it arson and if so was it an insurance scheme or is there a serial arsonist I should maybe watch out for?

I might have missed it I don't always catch the news but my folks pretty much watch the news daily and they haven't seen anything about it either.

That wasn't the personal thing though.

Back in 2008 my mom was living in this duplex. It had a Push Button Stove. Those of you familiar with them are probably screaming "Whhyyyyyyyy" to the heavens those not usually respond "cool"

Quick explanation most people do not use Push Button stoves because they are push button a stove so simple to turn on that children and dogs can turn them on.

In related news my mom had a dog, don't worry folks she passed later of old age.

So my mom left to volunteer at a Haunted House (Impressive business model the owner convinced people it would fun to volunteer but charged people coming I think literally the only one getting paid was him)

We are there when we get word that her duplex is on fire. We get there and the fire crew saved her dog and put out the fire but smoke and heat damage means that she just lost most of her stuff.

The Red Cross shows up and helps her out, and thank god she has renters insurance. The landlord politely tells her she won't be welcomed back after the firefighters determine the source of the fire is the push button stove the landlord has in the place. Yeah guy basically blamed my mom for him being stupid.

Anyway that was just to kind of establish the news story see all of that is kind of important and me as a reporter would have been "Hmmm I wonder if a lot of other homes have push button stoves and haven't realized the danger I smell a story"

But the reporter who showed up asked about the facts about the fire including the stove and left. You know what appeared on the news the next night.

Photogenic family who had a house fire and are upper middle class had a fire and super need our help guys awwwwwww aren't they adorable send donations to.....

Yeah not a single mention of my widowed mom who had been living alone, lost her own home when she couldn't keep up the payments after my dad who had college degrees and thus better paying jobs died and the bank was unwilling to work with her so it was sell and have money or get foreclosed on and get nothing.

My mom was a journalism gold mine.

The photogenic family with a lot of resources and neighborhood help got a donation set up for them by the media and treated as the human interest piece of the week. Apparently they were great for ratings.

But that's the kind of stuff that makes it hard to trust the news. If I was living in a home with a push button stove I would want someone to mention how dangerous they can be how easy to turn on they are. But the news never covered that never talked about it.

Instead I get to find out "Thing Happened were'e going to tell you everything but why cuz we don't care" "Person said this was it the truth meh who knows we sure as hell don't care"

So when I am watching the News any News I always ask myself one simple question "Why is this news" if the answer is "Because it's gossip" which is depressingly often the case then I ignore it but if the answer is "because it's important" then I go look into it as much as I can myself because they aren't going to tell me anything about it if it didn't get great ratings.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

There aren't many who could call people on their bullshit and still have anyone willing to be interviewed.

TBH, as a society I'm not sure we've gotten to the point where anyone wants to talk about the coercive mix of what ratings and access do to the actual discourse.

I'm not sure how you actually fix it either. Mandate access? That doesn't seem workable. Restrict lying in the press? Well, first amendment.

I think in the US, bar none if you want to fix this particular problem then one of our founding assumptions has to change. Largely I'm not sure Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, et. al when conceptualizing the framework of the press and agreeing could possibly forsee the eventual corporate aparatus it looked like.

That is, I think they wanted to enshrine the ability of people to put out their point of view, lies or not. But at the same time, I'm not sure they envisioned the inability for men of property (as would have been their concern at the time) to find dry facts without considerable time and investment. I'm not sure that was a goal they were shooting for. I think they did conceptualize that as a function of the press they would have read.

[jackfaire]

TBH, as a society I'm not sure we've gotten to the point where anyone wants to talk about the coercive mix of what ratings and access do to the actual discourse.

More crackdowns by the FCC. This would at least work on Network news.

See the reason that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are "free" is because they are using frequencies on loan from the US Government. The condition of this deal that gave them these frequencies is that they had to have a News Program. It's a requirement of their operations agreement.

The FCC has the power to fine the news networks for things like swearing on the air that's why the 5 second delay is a thing to give a person enough time to bleep before it hit's the broadcast feed.

At the very least this would work on misleading or outright false news reports. If a report is found to be intentionally misleading fine them. If a report is an outright lie fine them.

It doesn't really effect privately held news networks which is why 24 hour news became a thing. They could spend 24 hours lying to your face and only the ratings would determine if they do it again as the FCC has no real control over them and their following FCC broadcasting rules typically falls under voluntarily doing so. If you notice many channels will censor swearing during certain times not because the FCC says they have to but because Ratings dictate more people watch if they do.

If we could at least trust Network News to not be lying then we would at least have one trustworthy news source. And I know that the FCC "cracksdown" now but corrections are issued in the least visible way possible.

It's the same as if the headline story was "RUSSIA NUKES CHINA" and then the very next day on page five was a very small correction "russia didn't really nuke china"

Few if any people will see that and for weeks people will think China was wiped off the map. I think the best deterrent would be make the network pay out the nose for the transgressions make it a real penalty not a slap on the wrist and make the on-air personality admit it was a lie. You think anybody is going to read a lie off of the teleprompter if they know they will have to publicly nationally admit they lied.

Naw I doubt it. There are ways to fix a broken system but we seem to have forgotten that the News Programs we watch aren't there because of ratings but because they lose their ability to broadcast if they cancel the news. They are legally obligated to deliver us the news.

As to how to get them away from Fluff Pieces I think that would require new laws determining standards that a news story has to fit before it's fit to air. Standards such as having all of the information available and following up on stories. instead of dropping them for a kitten in a tree.

Never suppressing stories just demanding accurate ones. Oh and stop this News Half Hour Bullshit.

They are obligated for an hour of news and yet many channels just repeat the same stories in the second half hour as they did in the first.

So there are ways to make them better.

[wolfie]

TBH, as a society I'm not sure we've gotten to the point where anyone wants to talk about the coercive mix of what ratings and access do to the actual discourse.

I'm not sure how you actually fix it either. Mandate access? That doesn't seem workable. Restrict lying in the press? Well, first amendment.

Faux News actually won a court case about that - they won the right to spew absolute BS and call it news.

[protege]

...they won the right to spew absolute BS and call it news.

IIRC, they declared themselves an "entertainment network" and were free to spew all the bullshit their viewers could stand. Sadly, from personal experience, Faux Noise does cause brain rot. My grandmother (dad's mom) would watch that shit all day, and was soon goose-stepping to whoever was on at the time. This was the same person who, when finding that Obamacare was about to be passed, started screaming about people getting "free healthcare." Never mind that she'd been retired since 1975 and got Medicaid. When I called her out on in, she was pissed. Her reaction? "That's different, I at least worked."

Unfortunately, every news outlet seems to be biased one way or the other. For example, in my area, we had the Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review. The "PG" tended to lean towards the left; the "Trib" tended to lean towards the right. Reading both would mean you'd get the truth as to what was going on