Subj : Re: Links 'R' Us
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : Trouble
Date : Mon Sep 05 2005 21:07:08

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

John Iwaniszek wrote:

> Nick wrote:
>> John Iwaniszek wrote:
>>> Jim Larson wrote:
 
>>>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4214516.stm

>>> We can only hope.  I am not optimistic.  People still tell that
>>> old knee- slapper about Gore claiming to invent the internet and
>>> that Kerry looks French.

>> How does people telling jokes have any possible relevance to tough 
>> journalism?  
 
> Those were repeated by "tough journalists" as though they were facts or 
> even newsworthy.

So you're saying that just reporting what they see (dying people) and not 
immediately buying the party line (everything is fine) that's given to 
them won't fix what's wrong with the news today, if they don't also 
develop the research skills necessary to write a high school term paper?

I'm being serious here

Tough Journalism implies investigative journalism, people looking for 
stories, what happened in NO is that people parroted what they saw, and 
didn't parrot what they were told.

I think John is saying they'll still need an influx of fact checking 
skills, and to find stories in places other than press junkets, and the 
nuggets dropped by schills from the administration.


Hey John, the reporters work for the networks, the networks are owned by 
companies, therefore the safe journalism was a detante of sorts, none of 
the networks could really break with the party line for the reasons you 
have mentioned like no access to the president for bad press.

However, this only works so long as no one steps out of line, when one of 
them breaks with a 'true' story, they all have to run it, or risk losing 
ratings.

So though they have institutional reasons why the rules shifted to safe, 
maybe they'll shift back to honest.

Again fact checking and curiosity don't hurt

-- 
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.
Seek what they sought."
--Basho

.