"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:
stuff snipped

Because it bothers you so much! (-: I don't understand why, this is
just
how things play out.

Which sure as hell don't make it right. This is a long-standing
windmill for me to tilt at. I just think that journalists should be held
to some sort of standard that indicates that they don't put out a real
anything that happens to float past and looks like a couple extra
minutes are filled.

By all means, let's have the government license them and publish
journalistic standards . . . no, wait, that's not such a good idea afterall.

Look at all the supposition that came about after the
Challenger disaster, the OK city bombing, etc. When people have
incomplete
information on a newsworthy subject they resort to "what if" scenarios.

Pretty much makes my point. I have no problem with people doing
that, but journalists should not just pass along the latest rumor.

In most cases, they properly indicate that it's conjecture and not fact. I
think a greater problem is how many news sites co-mingle opinion with
reporting and deliberately "mark up" the former so it looks like the latter.

Perhaps it's not classic textbook journalism (which I think no longer
exists) but it does give people (and the authorities) lines of inquiry
to
follow. It doesn't upset me too much until you get to the "Israel was
behind the 9/11 crashes" sort of BS.

But isn't that an obvious (note I don't say "rational") extension of
what you are saying is perfectly okay. Sorta indicates that every theory
and supposition should get the same weighting unless it personally
offends the journalist??

In an age where Bill O'Reilly considers Darryl Hannah an "expert" on solar
energy and Katie Couric gives ex-Playmate Jenny McCarthy a forum for her
anti-vaccination views, anything goes. You are indeed Don Quixote, tilting
at windmills. The Golden Age of journalism has come and gone.

It's why we have think tanks - sometimes it's "out of the box" that
leads to
the answer. Do you know how long it took the Navy to figure out the
Thresher didn't sink because of bad welds but a very unusual problem
where
the ballast tank valves froze shut? A *very* long time. They fixed on
a
cause and tried very hard to bend all the fact to fit their preordained
conclusion. That's at least as bad as examining fanciful theories and
maybe
even quite a bit worse.

But that is acknowledged as out of the box and not some actual
occurrance UNTIL the actual facts back it up. I get a chuckle out of
the next line fixing a cause and then bending facts. Isn't that exactly
what you are doing with the supposition that it the thing was hijacked
and then either flown into the sea or landed somewhere?

But I am not a news organization or even a journalist. I am allowed to
posit possibilities. (-:

--
Bobby G.