News media's credibility crumbling

Fox News is scarily inaccurate.

Well, well, where have the of you been? Don't tell me you've been swallowing what the major media has been deciding to tell the "world"? As a US citizen I'd rather listen to the BBC, at least regarding what is more likely going on in DC. Our US major news networks, inc. cable news, are so transparent, with a clear agenda. And no one with an IQ over 50 should evr watch LOCAL news coverage. You'd do better reading the back of a box of cereal. Even traffic reports must have some drama.
Still, the singular exception to this opinion is the coverage of Sarah Palin. She is really stupid. Of course the media really has little to do with her "rap". She distinctly earned it, to that, I do say, just watch!!

to indiscriminately consume media is akin to super-sizing your fast food

brits censoring media http://current.com/items/89513017/mp_s_seek_to_censor_the_media.htm#responses

This is true, they tell more fairy stories than fairies. Perhaps if they were prosecuted seriously heavy, they would stop selling flying pigs.

good; they're liars

Monolithic media by now is so discredited that it is hard to imagine the public letting the internet spawn yet another such focus of mass attention.

Now that viewers and readers have real options it is unimaginable that the kind of monopoly enjoyed at one time by ABC, CBS, and NBC will ever return.

People are that much more diversified. As soon as they detect talking heads drifting into propaganda sermons - not consise analysis - they just bolt to wherever a better view can be found.

Witness the sudden rise of self-confessed political-wonk, Rachel Maddow. She's smart, funny, quick witted, although her appearance with Colbert did look like torture, she resonates with the ways people want to dissect issues, rather than be patronized.

One simple fact, that people are rejecting the MSM for its lack of honesty and transparency, is pushing the media back to standards it observed 50 years ago.

But for big networks and big newspapers even that regression to sanity and balance may be too late. For too long the media has been a footstool pretending to be a tiger.

Take many news programmes with the same attitude as you did with The Truman Show. Much is repeated hoping we accept it as fact. Much attempt is made to cover the true facts depending on whether you watch Fox CNN etc. Much is distorted. Always keep an open mind and remember there are many shades of white.

Do you think that in the future, main stream media would have the same impact . influence or will this go to the millions of bloggers world wide?

Matt

To get the truth, you have to depend on yourself and basic fact searching n the Internet with research organizations not associated with any media outlet.

The sad truth is, or the good news is, the media is everything and everyone and yes, I believe sites like current where information is shared becomes the true interactive information resource.

You mean to say that our very own versions of Pravda and Izvestia running constant corporate consumption-directed infotainment and political advertorials might be somewhat... warped?

I am shocked I tell you!

Shocked!

Surprised? Not a bit.. But that this has become public knowledge!

I am Shocked! And, uh, Dismayed!

And so on..

Today in America, News sells. The way the news is presented. If you think about it, we have several news sources, and they all have the basic same pool of stories much due to the internet.

Now why would a person watch this station over another station? They simply like the way in which the information is presented. If you are in the middle to conservative you have a list of stations, if you are liberal you have a different list of stations.

My point is, they are SELLING the news today. It's a privatized form of Propaganda, which to my knowledge is rather original. Usually the government mandates the propaganda. (laughs and the mockery of it all).

I have found a unique source on the Internet that I do trust for news. It reports on the new, and then it shows every news station and source that is reporting on that story, when it was reported, when it was updated, if it was, and has links to the original source. For me, that's what I trust. And no I don't want to share, then I'll never win the "news game"... dammit! Well that is if play it again. I'm all doing human interest stuff, to give people's brains a break from all that went down last month.

The media was perceived--and proven--to be favoring Obama by a huge margin. Look at newsbusters.org and some of the other sites to see how biased most reporters really were. And the Washington Post's ombudsman recently admitted heavy news media bias in favor of Obama (Of course they only admitted this AFTER the election).

Obama got the sweeter end of the new media deal.

That's one reason why he won.

I'm glad that the President gets his news from different sources. He should. He's not like us and therefore he should get it form a different area.

Today is the day, demand the truth! No more spinning. We should shame individuals who trie to mislead us! News media should be ashamed to cover fact and spin as equal. Spin is distorted truth and every time they let someone spin distorted facts, they are purposely misleading. Media should not enable people to distort with no consequences. Truth should win over spin! Its up to them!

Yesterday is history
Tomorrow is a mystery
Today is a gift, that’s why we call it Present.
** Demand the truth today**
** Truth should win over spin**

The TRUTH IS NOT LEFT OR RIGHT! Lying, half-truths, distorted truth should not be a choice, honesty should be the rule. Individuals who choose to spin, lie, tell half-truths, or distort the truth, should be shamed. Eventually they would be afraid to spin, lie, tell half-truths, or distort the truth for FEAR of SHAME.

Accountability works best for everyone, good gets praise, bad gets shame. Plain and simple. Accountability in government and media would be a step in the right direction. Trust is earned. Its time they start earning our trust, by telling the truth.

Pirate Sauce:

i am not so sure about that, the "lifting of the veil of lies"...just thinking back upon all the comments from both sides in regard to the election alone bears that out...each side telling "their" truth. No objectivity, including myself.

If you don't watch the news you are uninformed.

If you do watch the news you are misinformed.

WE ARE THE NEW MEDIA.

THE LIES AND SPIN HAVE COME TO AN END AND WE WILL ALL BEGIN TO HAVE A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD AS WE SLOWLY LIFT THE VEIL OF LIES WE HAVE BEEN FED FOR YEARS.

We have arrived at a media rich society, never have so many had more freedom of choice. The problem, all content is always seen as factual until evaluated beyond the page. For the last decade the freedoms of the press have been politically manipulated beyond any common understanding. Putting this in to social context, your position in society will almost always dictate what you chose to read. If you understand this you will not be surprised to know why. When human understanding begins to reach a personal saturation point your understanding of the world around you has no context to accurately describe an event in history. Because time and print will always distort fact from fiction it will always add more cynicism to fuel the debate. More so, Obama is a construct of our times leading the way beyond any old style political norm. However I fear for change for all its good connotations it will bring a country to the brink.

A lot of people just don't care about what main stream media has to say. Its a good thing for people to find out things for themselves.

For me, it's The Daily Show, The Economist, and the PBS News Hour or BBC World News (via PBS).

I respect NPR, but for some reason, it just doesn't hold my attention through an entire broadcast.

I used to love CNN - I even went on the studio tour in Atlanta in the 90's 'cause I was such a fanboy - but I can't stand anything on CNN anymore.

Almost every single article I read is from the Associated Press, whether it is printed on my local newspaper, online, news magazines, etc. If you search for an article they are all written from the same source and the wording is exactly the same with different authors. Tell me if I am wrong because I think it's odd we get majority of our news from one source. So it doesn't matter where I read the news or where I get it form when it's written from the same source.

I recently discovered this too http://www.projectcensored.org
It's another media research project

Real journalism is still out there. I get most of my news from Free Speech Radio and Democracy Now. People need to look beyond the cable news networks for information. What they claim is journalism is just speculation by pundents squished between commercials. I'm still firmly behind real journalists and think they are very necessary to our democracy when they do their jobs and are not controlled by corporate interests.

I have to agree with the sentiment of the article. I'll weigh in and say I get most of my news from sites like Current, AlterNet, shows like the Daily Show, and magazines like The Economist.

Investigative journalism appears to be dead in most daily papers. Those reporters who let on that they investigate are usually inthrall to one pressure group or another. Usually they are poodles of organised municipal/corporate politicos of the right wing stripe.

Edwin R Morrow is alive and well and his name is Kieth Olberman.

The media has become more and more bias with time. I believe this is because news without emotion is boring to certain groups of people. To boost ratings this emotion is served in the form of opinion. Its come to the point where you often have to read a story from many sources to compare and contrast to glean the truth out.

I can honestly say that I used to enjoy watching Fox News. However, the more I watched, the more they would constantly say they were 'fair and balanced' all while swinging more Right than a English bus driver with horrible depth perception.

The only fair news is Current, For the People, By the People.

It's not like journalists are out to create controversy and cause problems. They're just people trying to make a living. The difference is that the major networks are all basically businesses now and the journalists have to find a way to disseminate news and make a buck at the same time.

In other words, the people are no different, the job itself has become different. Integrity has lost it's place in modern journalism.

I made a post myself about the necessity of media reform in the country and pointed to a network called,"The Reals News Network," wich is completely listener supported. They do no advertising and they take no corporate funding, therefor, allowing them to examine every issue with the exacty same level of objective scrutiny and not be subjected to there funders' ideals. In terms of the presidency, I will admit that I voted third party, however there is one thing that I feel is necessary to everyone no matter who they voted for. This past presedential race has awakened a great many people and prompted a lot of interest to pay attention to what the government and the president does and no matter who you voted for, it is now the responsibility of every one of us, to keep all eyes on the president and hold him to the promises he has made. In the past, once an election has ended and a president has been voted in, a great majority of the poeple who took great interest during the campaign tend to leave it there. A true change means that a president (who works for us, we don't work for him) needs to be held accountable for what he does in our name and needs to be answerable to the people. The only way we can truly keep up on what he is doing is to have access to consistent, objective news coverage. I tend to cross reference a great number of independent media, but the Real News Network has proven time and again to be the most consistent. It is worth checking out.

http://therealnews.com/t/

Wasn't there a law about truth in reporting that was overturned like back in the 70's?? I can't remember what it was called, but it basically held the news outlets to truth and accuracy with threat of legal prosecution if they didn't.

Why was that reversed and what can we do to write up a new law to keep the new from lies and slander?

You cannot get an accurate picture of the world through only one media source(no, not even Current).
You have to research various world media.
That is just the nature of news- it's second hand information, which means it is probably distorted. So you have to approach news like an inspector would, investigating everyone's version of what happened, in order to get an accurate idea.

Unfortunately, most people don't have the time or interest to undertake a media research project everyday, which paves the way for propaganda machines.

I was at a Conference where one of the authors of Wikinomics spoke (Anthony D. Williams).

He showed a chart where CNN has lost a good deal of the media market to websites like Digg and Current.

I wish I could find the diagram to illustrate.

Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
These are the questions fair journalists ask and answers given. All of our media is poor as it usually leaves the Why (or any inconvenient question) out, but replaces it with pejoratives against one side or the other.
In order to have a free media, journalists might have to take these matters out of the hands of the network heads, and actually start reporting accurately instead of according to what brings the ratings.

its hard to trust journalists, politicians, used-car salesmen, or auto mechanics, when they usually have some ulterior motive up their sleeve!
The news media credibility 'cookie' crumbled a long time ago. ESPECIALLY local news, they're ridiculously biased, I stay away from them as much as possible.
I don't have a lot of sources, and when I have a busy work week I don't spend much time on the internet or watching TV, so I listen to KPFK when I'm driving to-and-fro.
Oh yeah, and CURRENT too!

Ita a problem of

ShareHolder / StockHolder

The share holders interests trump the stock holders...

I personally get all my news from this cool website called Current, maybe you've herd of it?

This is when it got bad.

Yellow journalism is journalism that downplays legitimate news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sell more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organizations or journalists. Campbell (2001) defines Yellow Press newspapers as having daily multi-column front-page headlines covering a variety of topics, such as sports and scandal, using bold layouts (with large illustrations and perhaps color), heavy reliance on unnamed sources, and unabashed self-promotion. The term was extensively used to describe certain major New York City newspapers about 1900 as they battled for circulation. By extension the term is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion, such as systematic political bias.

here is more and more@link.

Origins: Pulitzer vs. Hearst

The term originated during the Gilded Age with the circulation battles between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The battle peaked from 1895 to about 1898, and historical usage often refers specifically to this period. Both papers were accused by critics of sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation, although the newspapers did serious reporting as well. The New York Press coined the term yellow kid journalism in early 1897 after a then-popular comic strip to describe the down market papers of Pulitzer and Hearst, which both published versions of it during a circulation war.[1] This was soon shortened to yellow journalism with the New York Press insisting, "We called them Yellow because they are Yellow."[2]

Joseph Pulitzer purchased the World in 1883 after making the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the dominant daily in that city. The publisher had gotten his start editing a German-language publication in St. Louis, and saw a great untapped market in the nation's immigrant classes. Pulitzer strove to make The World an entertaining read, and filled his paper with pictures, games and contests that drew in readers, particularly those who used English as a second language. Crime stories filled many of the pages, with headlines like "Was He a Suicide?" and "Screaming for Mercy."[3] In addition, Pulitzer only charged readers two cents per issue but gave readers eight and sometimes 12 pages of information (the only other two cent paper in the city never exceeded four pages).[4]

Ladies and gentlemen- WE ARE NOW THE MEDIA WE WISH TO HAVE!

I started to suggest putting Media Research Center and Media Matters side by side and then charting a course midway between. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor.) But honestly I don't think that would work. Anyhow, wherever one gets the news, I think the key is to stay skeptical without allowing oneself to slip into complete cynicism.

I posted this after a long-time friend and I had a "discussion" last night about the media. I voted for Obama, she for McCain. That probably says a lot right there. (I am pleased to say we are still friends, differences notwithstanding; we've known each other for 35 years, hate to lose her friendship over this). She said she read all kinds, what she pointed to most was FOX news however. She kinda did a bit of back pedaling after she said FOX. That is when she said she read all kinds. I did not say anything...just listened. Anyway it got me to thinking about "media credibility" even more than I normally do. Looking around on the net I tried to find research that pointed to any numbers, etc...one site I went to, the Media Research Center I believe it was called, had email alerts...cool! Until I read what they were. They only reported the bias of LIBERALS. How can they be considered credible themselves!??!?!? I did write an email asking this, did not sign up, no word yet. If I get any, will post it here. So...I'd like to know who are YOUR favorite sources for news, if you have any. How do you check? If you do. All that kinda stuff. As for me. I receive in my Google reader over 1000 articles a day. Those articles come from all kinds of media outlets, from Boston Globe to Irish Times to BBC and more. I belong to NewsCred and Newsis Free, two sites which aggregate news from all over the world in to one site. (No posting, just reading) I also get email alerts from NY Time, LA Times, and yes, even Huffington Post, which I know some don't like. I like reading what people think and write everywhere.

Not leaving Current out....that part is obvious! :)