All the same journalists who pushed for the Iraq war on false intelligence are still there at their jobs doing the same crap. There are zero consequences when "mainstream" journalists push fake news.
It wasn't like they learned their lesson, either. They've continued to staff up with morons and to report a lot of falsehoods and distractions in the years since the Iraq War days.
It doesn't matter if they correct it after they've already sold the lie. The damage is done and most people won't read the correction.
After 9/11, New York Times wrote an article about how dangerous Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were. MSM just takes Bush/Obama admin + intelligence communities claims at face value. It is supposed to be their job to fact-check govt, but instead they are just a rubber stamp for govt propaganda. The only admin they have been capable of properly fact-checking is Trump admin and that's only because their corporate sponsors & donors are anti-Trump.
When the intelligence community makes a claim, media fact-checks that claim by asking the SAME intelligence community to verify.
If they aren't willing to put in the work to be trustworthy, there's no reason to give them any trust.
If one mistake tarnished reputation forever then after Iraq war none of CNN, Fox, NYT, MSNBC, WaPo should be in business, specially since all of these were accomplices in and not victims of falsehoods.
Mainstream media gets attacked for not doing enough fact checking, but also gets attacked for removing incorrect stories. I guess there's no way to win.
In fairness what the media deeds important and accepts as truth is as cherry-picked by some random newsroom editor.
That's why you see things like the Iraq war everyday on tv and then never again. People are still blowing themselves up over there. There is always a bigger story with a greater theme that uses daily news stories to paint a broader picture.
People who seek out truth themselves are more likely to find it.
Another big one was The New York Times and Judith Miller uncritically parroting Bush administration lies about Saddam Hussein making nuclear weapons. It became so flagrantly bullshit that the New York Times actually apologized for it a year or two later, but by then it was too late.
I still read The New York Times, but I do so knowing they have an American establishment bias and will make themselves uncritical puppets of the government whenever they feel so inclined. Probably most of what they publish is usually more true than false, but you've always got to read it with a grain of salt. The newspaper is best as a bellwether for what the American establishment wants the American public to believe. Having "faith" is precisely the wrong way to read a newspaper.
Why is surprising that those organizations were duped though? Are people laboring under the assumption that reporters are smarter than everyone else? Because that’s definitely a mistake.
You mean like how every 'reputable' news outlet uncritically repeated the US's Iraq war propaganda for months and fired journalists who criticized it? Or do you mean people you don't like saying things on social media?
Fair enough, but that's stupid and it undermines their thesis. Mainstream media rarely lies, although they are sometimes deceived or publish incorrect or inaccurate information (which is different than intentional deception and fabrication) but outlets like Inforwars lie all the time.
Remember when Washington Post lied about Russians hacking a US power plant to sabre rattle for war? How about when the New York Times lied about WMDs which led to tens of thousands of deaths in Iraq and trillions of dollars wasted?
The news should be avoided because news websites are ideological war drums controlled by billionaires with agendas to push. These websites have led to direct harm. The New York Times is smeared with the blood of Iraqi civilians.
They don't even reflect the country or area they represent.
Supposedly "neutral" websites like AP and NPR routinely lie and smear facts to the slant of their journalists, as well. Politifact and other "fact checking" organizations are a laughing stock because of extreme bias.
But they haven't been feeding BS for years. The vast, vast majority of news reporting done on a day to day basis is factually correct. Journalists call people, check facts, get quotes.
I'm not saying that the media is faultless and never makes mistakes. Or that they don't, from time to time, overhype absolute nonsense stories or clicks or viewing figures. But we're comparing infrequent reporting mistakes with deliberate and calculated lying. They are not anywhere near the same thing.
The fact that you feel like fake news is being used as a scapegoat should make you stop and wonder if there is any evidence to back up that feeling, rather than double down on it.
They exist to be contrarian. Taking on the MSM is an end into itself and when the MSM is exactly right they'll just go be wrong. There's no shortage of fact-based independent journalism. Try emptywheel on Twitter.
Wrong. The things it does get wrong have more impact. Russiagate is just one prior example. It was patently false from the outset, but led to mass delusions, promotions of fake news propagandists to the point that they are now embedded within and celebrated by the MSM, the discrediting of the media and the intelligence community, breakdown of trust of those institutions by those who had been clear-headed, and fever-dream level hysteria by those who were misled, greatly fracturing Americans who were already divided.
It may be true that they get fewer specific points wrong, but if the ones they do get wrong count for a lot more, that's not better. That's worse.
Here's what I keep coming back to: when Dan Rather was hoodwinked into pushing a fake story about GWB's minimal military service, he was fired. When Keith Olbermann was similarly caught pushing a story he found and liked that turned out to be false, he was fired. When Brian Williams made up a BS story about an RPG firing at his chopper, be was suspended for 6 months.
What happens when Breitbart or HuffPo or various YouTubers and bloggers get caught in a lie? Nothing. Nobody's head is put in the noose.
News aggregators are to journalism what AliExpress is to shopping - they'll give you what you wanted at the price you wanted, but piled high with lies and crappy quality, and you'll never find the same company twice so their reputation doesn't matter.
All the same journalists who pushed for the Iraq war on false intelligence are still there at their jobs doing the same crap. There are zero consequences when "mainstream" journalists push fake news.
reply