News, Media And Truth

Enjoying Our Waste February 26th, 2008 Things We Say Wrong

Can I tell you a little bed time story. Once upon a time, there were two journalists...

Uh Oh! No video. You will need the Flash player and Javascript enabled to watch this show.

Can I tell you a bed time story? The news at ten does it all the time. Once upon a time, there were two investigatory journalists. (What? I’m not an ambiturner – it’s a common problem.)

In the magical kingdom of ‘Florida’, they were hired by Fox News to get the dirt on anyone they could, and help warn consumers – helpless consumers, like you and me.

They did a story on bovine growth hormones in milk production. Fox told them to change their content. That means, lie… just a little lie.

83 revisions to the script? That’s a BIG lie.

They wouldn’t change it. They were fired. They sued for backwages – and they won! Then it was appealed – then they lost.

How does THAT happen?

Fox News argued in court that they were not required by law to tell the truth. And they’re not. And neither is any other private News organisation… [oohh, ouch!]

Think of your relationship with your anchor man…as a verbal agreement. He promises to provide you with honest, objective reports, and you believe him. But there’s no real contract. There’s no real obligation to do that. And if he wants to keep his job, he’s just going to keep reading what comes on the teleprompter.

Yeah, like any anchor man does research to check the validity of a story anyway.

The parent company of Fox News is NewsCorp. On their corporate web site, they have the following written under the “corporate governance standards of business conducts” section:

“Integrity, honesty, forthrightness and fairness are of primary importance in all business relationships involving the Company.”

I wonder if that includes their business relationships with ME. Oh, wait, just keep reading.

“These Standards are not intended to be all encompassing. Situations may arise that are not expressly covered or where the proper course of action is unclear.”

Ain’t that the truth, hey guys? Like getting caught telling your employees to lie. ‘It was just so unclear. I mean, a definite grey area. We had to omit… everything… that reflected poorly on our corporate partners…in order to fairly tell the story.’

I think all News casts should take Hollywood’s lead and put a disclaimer on the screen that says, “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by a true story” so that way they can at least tell the truth about almost telling the truth. And the whole dishonesty and media thing holds true for more than just TV. Check out our link to doctored photos from Reuters. And you thought PhotoShop was only for fashion magazines?

But who can I trust to tell the truth about what’s going on in the world? CNN? CNN – the Creative News Network? Accuracy and honesty? Not their forte.

I’ll tell you who to trust…

NOBODY… not even us.

There’s so many good links below on our web site – come check it out. You’ve got to see this.

And they all lived happily, and dishonestly, after. The End

Transcribed by: Ian

Links

The Journalists Speak
News Corps Site
Reuters Doctoring Photos?
Doctored photos, the movie (Thanks for the link Adam!)”

Share the show:

Copy this code onto your site or blog:

8 Comments

  • 1/15/11 @ 18:42

    tomboy

    i didn't believe all that stuff before i sew this,i mean if it were all true then it would be ...
  • 2/5/09 @ 15:07

    ItzMeRon

    Oh and: www.slashdot.org
  • 2/3/09 @ 16:25

    ItzMeRon

    Non "Main stream media": www.mediamatters.org www.liveleak.com www.youtube.com www.pressTV.com (Considered a CNN of IRAN) english.aljazeera.net/ (go to their YouTube.com channel instead) www.cspanjunkie.org www.crooksandliars.com www.thesmokinggun.com www.drudgereport.com (I am "iffy" on this ...
  • 8/18/08 @ 9:55

    sadunkal

    Different medias lie about different things. I personally have observed the following lies/misinformation: *About China and Tibet, to smear China and ...
  • 7/18/08 @ 8:51

    Allan

    Check out the movie/documentary, "The Corporation" to know more about this kind of thing. It's very interesting and REALLY disturbing.
  • 7/17/08 @ 10:25

    steph

    thats why i hardly watch the news now because it seems like they have all turned liberal in a way ...
  • 6/6/08 @ 20:00

    pkw

    Ok, the sad part is that negativity sells in "News". So if the stock market takes a crash, it ...
  • 5/13/08 @ 11:51

    Meandering

    Who am I suppose to trust? Crazy guys with video blogs on the web or respected news organizations like ...

Sorry, we're getting way too much spam.
You must be logged in to post a comment. If you haven't already, register here.

Recent Shows

Recent Comments

The Brothers Winn

Just two brothers making a podcast. We both research and write the show.

Get a hold of us here:
theshow@whatyououghttoknow.com