OK - so I can't call myself a journalist and not talk about this thing with FOX News.
Lets start off by saying....Hahahaha, it's about damn time we had a political leader with the guts to call the mass media out on their clearly bias reporting. Not just FOX News, but every so called news organization that endorses a candidate or declares a winner in a political debate or just simply neglects to report the other side of the story.
The Society of Professional Journalists has a published Code of Ethics for journalists. They are not a set of universal rules, but rather a voluntary guide to remind us of our commitment to a fair and balanced story.
These are just the highlights of the Code:
- Seek Truth and Report It
- Minimize Harm
- Act Independently
- Be Accountable
The sad part about it is, most consumers don't even realize that they are only getting one side of the story.
For the most part, John Q. gets up in the morning and turns on Channel X News. Later, after dinner, he again turns on Channel X News. Maybe sometime in between he reads the newspaper too.
More than likely, John Q. is only reading his local news in the paper and is getting all of his national news from Channel X. If Channel X is only reporting one side of the story, than that is all that poor John Q. knows about the issue.
Gone are the days of "Fair and Balanced." Today you have to treat news agencies as you would fighting siblings. Read his side, read her side and know that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
i think the sad part of it is that rupert murdock was right. the public and the president cant really tell the difference between opinion content and news. its as if the editorial page has been spread out all over the paper and now we cant tell which is a story and which is someones take on a story. the ticker the closest thing we have to hard news is pretty much identical on every station.
ReplyDeletebut thats the crux of it as well. how an issue is framed dictates how an issue is reported. reporters simply ask questions instead of begging the question. the difference has become how one skews the facts instead of which facts are relevant.
a popular catchphrase has become "your entitled to your own opinion but your not entitled to your own facts" but your only getting the same facts if your telling the same story the same way. in which case whats the real difference?