Originally posted by Leveller
As long as we have a free press which chases money, the truth will always be out of reach.

Sounds like a few of my ex's....glad thats over. Those are the majority of people, the rare ones actually have morals.

...what free press...?

You know, we are not the only one to use the cut/paste keys...

Have you noticed since media use windows, word and the spell corrector how i,creased the mispelling error in newspapers, magazines etc...

Well, I would say 10 years ago, this kind of thing would have been swept under the rug quickly because American media was unchallenged in its liberal views and held a virtual monoply but increased competition for the likes of Fox news and a few right sided papers and radio news shows has put these guys in a dog eat dog mode. Instead of covering for the Times, they(liberal media) pounced on the story out of fear of being scooped and included in the scandal themselves.

My point is, healthy competition helps keep people in check. I only wonder if it will stop with the resignation of two cheif editors and firing of Jason Blair or snow-ball into a plethera of scandals throughout the entire media entity.

I think we can start by pointing fingers at our society.

Now, what you guys may not know, is that publishing houses have "fact checkers" -- the poor lil' underpaid geezer who are supposed to run quick checks on things and make sure they're right. But our educational system is failing us. Our high-paying jobs and research grants are often going out of country because there are fewer and fewer well-educated Americans. We'd rather thow a lot of money at a sports star than to make heros of our scientists.

And so, the fact checkers might be able to catch things about music or sports, but they wouldn't know a zenith from a zoot suit. This error creeps throughout our system, making us less effective and more open to scammers, hoaxers, and outright frauds.

And this is one of the things that happened to the Times.

J. Bull 1,I'm gloating over this also.

I don't care for the Times - they are getting what they deserve. Between Blair, Dowd, and now this. The whole paper should be taken as one big op-ed.

NY Times is soo slanted it makes Fox seem fair and balanced.

Speaking of pointing fingers at our society, I agree: It seems our madness w/ 'PC' kept Blair writing lies, because, if I have followed story correctly, Blair was caught in his lies - his facts were indeed checked. Just the higher ups ignored it in the name of political correctness.


[Edited on 6-6-2003 by Bob88]

I was watching a news report on this incident on the BBC the other night. The one thing that I will say is at least you guys did something about it. Once the NYT was caught with it's trousers down it was spanked.

Here it's different. Our newspapers get away with fraud. British media institutionalism means that poor reporting and plagarism is an accepted part of our media coverage.

False reporting gets the occasional slap on the wrist but only if somebody has the balls and the cash to stand up to them. Even then your chances of winning your case are slim. Newspapers in this country have the best lawyers on thier payrolls.

I'm not sure how it works in the US, but here the newspapers are self regulating. They're never going to block a false story here if the risk that they can earn money from it is higher than the risk that they will be caught out.

My main problem is that people tend to believe what they read. When you can't trust those who claim to give you the news, who can you trust?

Leveller, this crap at the NY times w/ Blair went on for a while. He reported lies as far back as the 'DC Sniper incident'

NY kept sweeping his lies under the rug in the name of political correctness (Blair is black) and they didn't deal with him.

They should have been spanked long ago.

I agree dude. They taslked about the Sniper on the TV report.

My point is that at least you guys caught and punished the SOBs.

I was skimming through some sanctimonious drivel about this on the part of the NYT bemoaning the loss of faith in their unimpeachable veracity.
Are they mad? Who believed them anyway?