I hate the press. I should just leave it at that because it is all encompasing. But I can't.
Once again they stepped on their own tail when covering the mine accident. Press is supposed to be hard facts. Not presumptive speculation and hear say. There is a concept called confirming information that most news agencies fail to grasp. When the press reported the miners were alive, and then a few hours later reported the real news they were dead. That is completely irresponsible. They didn't even hear it from the mining company, they just heard it through the grapevine like everybody else in the area. The word of mouth was strong in terms of the news spreading to those physically there, even if it was unoffically heard from the company. But it was the media that hyped it to the entire country and was who truely spread the word. The fact is they mining company did not make any official statement, only one about the miners being dead. One of the families is going to sue because of the false information (see post on tort reform). But they are sueing the mining company, not the media. I think they are sueing the wrong people.
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4 comments:
Oh grow up. The press works on a deadline for a budget just like you do, so if they hear from the people on site that 12 people survived the accident, miraculously, they start writing that story. Now, if someone had corrected the press twenty minutes later when they realized it was a mistake, then perhaps all of the United States press wouldn't have misprinted. In this case, you can't blame the press for getting wrong information from the only source they had on the results of the accident. Where they supposed to devine that the radio reception led to a false message? Or perhaps, they could have asked some of the surviving miners for a quote... oh wait... they were still holed up in a cave.
You can hate the press because they're liberal and you can bash on their irresponsibility of coverage in some cases, but in this case, it really wasn't their fault.
Just because they work on a deadline does not mean that they can throw their ethics into the wind. And you are making excuses for people again. Can't anybody do something wrong and it be wrong? Most grownups don't have complex thoughts like that.
Yes, people can be wrong. Lots of people are wrong. I don't think that the media is allowed to "throw ethics to the wind" in order to make deadline (as we discussed off-blog), but you also can't blame the media for printing information that was announced to them and was incorrect. Again, I argue that they couldn't have just guessed that the guy didn't know what he was talking about. How do you fact check with ONE source who just announced twelve survivors.
Of course you didn't understand. You don't even try to understand. The whole point of these blogs is to argue blindly with each other and never bend our point of view, right?
I don't believe there is a big visible line between right and wrong. There are very few things that are black (we'll use this to mean wrong) or white (right). My argument is that the things in between are grey. The whole point of the grey area is that it isn't just one color (black or white) but there are shades of it. Especially in the case of ethics, you have to try and do best by what your "inner voice" tells you is the right thing.
Now, if you're quoting LacyK's "wrong," you're talking about wrong factual information. As in "I thought you said yes, but you said no." That is a misunderstanding or misstatement. A falsity. The original comprehension was "wrong."
Comprends?
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