Sunday, November 13, 2005

MSM doesn't have to verify source material?

I was listening to the radio and heard something that astonishes me. (Of course, I should not be astonished since I haven't trusted the veracity of the MSM for years.) What I heard was that people in the MSM, New York Times, CBS "News", Washington Post, etc. don't have to verify the "information" they publish as "news" any more, that the stuff needs to be proven false by the critics of the MSM. The primary focus was from a "story" concerning President Bush's final time in the guard and the forged documents from the commander of the guard unit as "reported" by Dan Blather of the CBS "Views". The woman (Mary Mapes) who was being interviewed concerning the forgeries had the absolute gall to state that she would run the story again even knowing the documents were forged since she believed the story to be "essentially true". Whatever happened to journalistic integrity? Whatever happened to rejecting stories that had little if any verification? I guess that those values don't mean much to those whose world view doesn't gibe with what the facts are. Once upon a time the news folks were the rightful watchdogs of the shadier layers of society, sadly no more from many of the MSM. Shades of the yellow journalism "news" papers such as National Enquirer and others.

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