The first casualty
The media didn’t exactly cover itself with glory during the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation, as the abulance episode I linked to previously showed. Townhall.com has a round-up of several other examples.
First off, I don’t think that the media as a whole is trying to lie, rather I think this sort of thing the result of a bunch of related tendacies ranging from ignorance to a desire to publish the most dramatic material availible. There also may be a tendency to trust the percieved ‘weaker’ or less powerful side more than the powerful. Overall, this is a problem of laziness and incompetence more than it is or bias or deliberate distortion.
Of course specific members of the media, mostly at quite low levels, do seem to by outright lying and knowingly serving as propaganda agents for Hezbollah.
Despite this not being primarily an organized problem, it is a very serious situation. We need to be able to rely on media organizations to present the most accurate picture of what is going on in the world as they possibly can. Their failure to live up to this basic responsibility and ensure that what they present to us is reality, not fiction is serious, and I think it would behove the media as a whole to deal with this.
My expectation is that if they don’t clean up their own house, someone will do it for them with undesirable results.
First thing that comes to my mind is confirmation bias on the part of the journos. But I think that is likely being a little unfair.
I believe that some journo’s in places like Lebanon, Iraq and Gaza do their best in very difficult and stressful circumstances. There are the accusations that some are best known for warming comfortable hotel couches.
And that leaves what I suspect are the Iraq/Lebanon/Gaza equivalents of VRN’s.
THAT could be a whole lot closer to a very uncomfortable truth than I like to imagine. I have been looking for a report from FCC on VRN’s - there have been a couple of preliminary comments from high places but nothing like the reports coming out from time to time from the local media commentary sources. This was the last comment on the FCC’s own site on that topic -
My interest primarily is whether there will be any acknowledgement (other than the “it has been done since Clinton’s time”) on US Government use of VNRs.
Add that to the deliberate faking of news stories (NYT and how many others) and photos (Reuters and how many others) and one has to really wonder at the likely veracity of anything the media (generally, not just MSM) puts out.
As for the newsmedia “favouring one side against another” the first instance that comes to my mind is the bollocking one of the national tv channels in NZ got about five years ago from its international owners and masters (CanWest) for broadcasting an item that was (quite severely) critical of Israel. As far as most sources in NZ are concerned, the editorial policies seem fair and even handed. To a reader from the US that might seem “to be favouring the other side” - it all depends upon your viewpoint.