Turns Out People Really Like It When The Press Fact Checks, Rather Than Just Reporting What Everyone Said
from the duh dept
This really shouldn't surprise anyone, but hopefully this means that more folks in the press will realize a simple point: their job isn't just to report on what both sides said, but to say directly when someone is lying or being misleading. The AP, which has had some issues in this department in the past, has started aggressively fact checking politicians and now claims that those fact check pieces are the most popular pieces they do. They're the most clicked and the most linked to stories. This is good news. One of the major frustrations with the press is how they seem to just reprint press releases and talking points, rather than challenging questionable claims. If they start to realize that people really do look to the press to tell them who's being truthful, perhaps some of these publications wouldn't be struggling quite so much.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, news
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it's a fine line
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Re: it's a fine line
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Re: Calling politicians on lies
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the stripy one missed some steps :)
(please note: i'm half joking here, but the insult was uncalled for unless it was a joke i failed to understand :) )
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Re: Re: Calling politicians on lies
if only there was a way to take printed news paper and print to it again, like a way to RE-peat the CYCLE of printing using less new paper than the time before.
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Great - BUT
I've seen plenty of investigative type reporting that ignore key elements, approached the issue from a bias perspective and ended up with promoting falsehoods.
What we need is a scientific discipline/approach to the news and while this is a nice step forward, it still isn't close to the real cure. I would also argue that the typical reporter isn't 'wired properly' to be a scientist. Most are wired with a European/Socialist view of the world.
Freedom
P.S. Where are the politicians that stand up and say, these are my core principles and every decision I make as your representative will be guided by these principles. Where is the honor of those in public service? We blame our representatives, but aren't they just a reflection of us? If we want true change in government, the first job is rebuild our core values and then government will reflect what we have become. Exchanging one set of radical politicians for another is treating the symptom and not the disease.
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Re: Great - BUT
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That's most reporting today.
I stopped being amazed long ago when I see papers and news chock full of one-sided-ness, like anything on copyright or homeschooling.
It's not even he-said, she-said. It's just he-said.
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Re: Great - BUT
long gone my friend.... long gone.
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Re: Great - BUT
___________________________________________]
If we are simply doing an exchange, then it's evidence that the "dumbing" of America so often spoken of is fact rather than theory. We have plenty of good candidates, but we do not work hard enough at locating them and promoting them. As a result, the big money folks (now empowered by the Supreme Court as never before) flood the media for their minions, and the American public cuts its own proverbial throat every two years.
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Wow. The news media are run by complete idiots. Jon Stewart has been doing exactly that since 1999. Over a fricken decade. And now finally the "mainstream" press is catching on?!
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second, more and more people are enjoying sites like huffington and the drudge report, which are somewhat light on balance. heck, they love rush limbaugh (and I am sure mikey does too!), and rush is incredibly good at not letting the truth get in the way of a good out of context nugget. its sort of how this place works, i think. would someone care to check for facts?
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of hazy delusion and fantasy
a dream
divorced from all reality.
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That being said, his posts have a much higher rate of accuracy, and the posters don't cover it up when they're wrong. They add an edit so everyone can see what happened.
So they're not only usually right, they're also honest.
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Amusing.
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also cameras.
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Rush Limbaugh: Oil Spill Was Deliberate Act By Environmentalists
http://gawker.com/5529289/rush-limbaugh-oil-spill-was-deliberate-act-by-environ mentalists
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Re: Re:Dude, Mike isn't a reporter, and this isn't a news site.
There are very few good forums to address the many interesting Mike does raise in his postings. Mike should look to find a way to have more high-end academic and professional readers join the threads , without always being called a Moron -- or worse -, but some high school kid on LSD
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Re: Re: Re:Dude, Mike isn't a reporter, and this isn't a news site.
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Re: Re: Re:Dude, Mike isn't a reporter, and this isn't a news site.
For the life of most of us, we can't figure out why various industry individuals do not work to find other avenues for increasing revenue than government welfare, mass litigation and instantly calling everyone a thief. Never stopped them.
He gets the readship, but the high-end academic and profressional readers do not bother posting
Why would they need to bother with trolls insistent that Mike is always wrong?
the threads often just turn into useless drival -- even w/o me helping
Are you conceding that your helping is contributory to useless [sic] drival?
There are very few good forums to address the many interesting Mike does raise in his postings.
If you are aware that few good forums exist, then it would help if you suggested some.
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And who said it...
Another important step, stop using anonymous sourcing, particularly when repeating the government line. If it's a whistleblower, sure, they deserve all the anonymity they can get, but otherwise? We deserve to know from which 'administration official with knowledge of the discussion' we're hearing.
@freedom... There are plenty of scientists who are both European and Socialist. I'm not sure exactly what dichotomy you're trying to draw there, but that one didn't work.
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It's not just fact checking
I think skew has much more to do with the reason for much of newspapers failings economically.
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re
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But Facts Are Not “Fair And Balanced”
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