Subj : Re: Links 'R' Us
To   : alt.tv.farscape
From : Nick
Date : Tue Sep 06 2005 02:23:05

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape

Trouble wrote:

> 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


I am wondering about this "no access to the president" problem.  If 
they all broke rank and reported things as they saw them would they 
all lose access?  Would the president then just go about his business 
and get no press whatsoever?  I think I would like to see what 
happened in that circumstance.  Right now they are all letting 
Washington dictate the rules even though they are the only game in 
town.  I don't remember Bush Sr. getting this easy of a time and I 
liked him better.

.