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

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.

Gee, it was really nice of you to succinctly make my point about
taking whatever floats by and mangling it until it fits what you want it
to. Never was there any mention of government intrusion (especially from
me of all people).

I just cut to the chase for you. In the final analysis, externally imposed
standards are the only ones that are effective. The desire to see
journalists act "professionally" means that there's a) a standard defined
and b) there's a way to enforce or cause journalists to adhere to that
standard. That's how we insure professional behavior from doctors, lawyers
and even massage therapists.

The competitive pressure of a free market dissolves away those standards in
the face of the reality that day old news has no value. So, to get the
"scoop" news organization now are willing to pay for interviews and accept
statements from interviewees without attempting to vet them in any way.

There used to be internal standards that you had to
meet that were imposed by your bosses, their bosses, or just plain old
peer pressure to get it right instead of merely filling up time with
whatever weirdness happens to pass by or calls looking for air time.

I'm not sure there ever were the "standards" you're talking about. The kind
of speculation you're talking about has always been with us, and it
typically gets worse when there aren't any "real" facts to be had, as in the
MH370 case. Read the new archives about Amelia Earhart. Different time but
same sort of speculative coverage in the absence of verifiable facts.

It's important to remember this isn't a "top down" process. Now, more than
ever, news organizations have a very good grasp on what their readers want
to read - you see it with almost every news site's "most emailed" or "most
read" feature. Newspapers before the internet very rarely knew what stories
people read or passed on. Now they know with excruciating detail what
interests people and what they want more of. You're just mad because it's
not representative of what you want more of. (-:

There used to be rotary phones, men used to wear hats and there was a time
when the web wasn't even a dream. Internal standards are still practiced by
some, but not many, news organizations. They're the ones that have enough
revenue to be able to afford that luxury. Not many can anymore.

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.

Oh yeah, think of the competitive advantage of saying nothing when your
competitors provide stuff that people are interested in reading, even if
it's supposition in the absence of hard facts (he says, sarcastically).

Since I first read this post I've been reading MH370 stories with an eye to
whether news organizations make it clear that what they are reporting are
not necessarily facts, but the best "guesses" we have available from the
people in a position to know something about the situation. That's why I
give reports like Chris Goodfellow's (that there was a fire) much greater
creedence than some turkey in the Malaysian government. Goodfellow's a
pilot who's "been there, done that" whereas a defense minister hasn't and
worse, yet, probably has some pretty good reasons *not* to tell the whole
truth.

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.

Sometimes, although I have noticed that CNN tends to get somewhat
inconsistent on that, especially after the first iteration. I'd have to
agree with the other part, and it is indicative of how the mighty have
fallen.

There's still a long, long way to go before we hit bottom, but we're getting
there.

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.

And that is the direct result of the journalists themselves. And I
have mentioned earlier and numerous times, that don't make it right...

No, it's not the journalists, it's the competitive pressures forced on them
by external forces. It's a number of those, too. It's businessmen who have
bought up newspapers, saddled them with debt and then bled them dry and left
them to rot on the vine. It's the Internet, too, providing stiff
competition for advertising and lowering the bar spreading rumors.
Other factors have played a large role in the dissolution of large media
organizations, too, but if you look at any of the major newspapers, the path
to extinction has been a pretty standard one for all of them. As they all
cut back on editorial staff, the product suffers. The right questions (is
this news source credible?) don't get asked and the beat goes on.

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. (-:

How Jenney-esque of you (grin)\

http://www.google.com/search?q=jenney

You'll have to be more specific. I'm sorry, I don't get the reference and
Google didn't help either.

--
Bobby G.