Indeed. You can only trust people who are well dressed.

“Anyone who has seen journalists reports about things they actually know about, tends to be a bit sceptical.”

This.

The media is appalling and the print media are by far the worst.

It really is only in the last few months that media outlets which were hitherto despised by all have become very considered gospel by everyone.

Not sure if serious but
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39011298

I’d genuinely missed that..thanks.

Lazlowoodbine…

On the 10pm news was a story about some one who rescued a sea turtle who had had his eyes gouged out. Apparently some fisherman did this routinely to turtles that came up in the nets as revenge for them eating their fish and it was determined that this was what had happened to this one.

Local news the next night there was a lovely, heartwarming story at the end, you know the kind of crap. Well blow me, there’s the same turtle but now it was a courageous fisherman who had saved it after the silly thing got caught in his propeller and lost both it’s eyes but with no other head trauma…

I want to check something out so can you answer a few questions for me.
You say the turtle story was on the 10, then the next day your regional news did the same story with a compleatly different take on it.
What’s your regional news programme?
I assume this is something that happened off the coast of the UK.
You reckon a couple of years ago, can you be more specific? It’ll just help me out if I can dig up anything

Thing is,what you describe just strikes me as so improbable I’d like to see for myself.

The media is appalling and the print media are by far the worst.

I’ll give you some print media (tabloids) but most still do good journalism. Most report facts and most clearly label opinions.

Do you believe that mike

The beauty of on-line papers is that it’s easy to read lots of papers

For me the most striking thing these days is the deficit of proper journalism. Far too much of the papers is made up of the same material lifted ad verbatim from the same source with the occasional topping and tailing

It’s reporting and information not journalism and knowledge in the main

Given the online papers are mostly the print media I do, I read a lot form various sources and mostly they out do the new online lot by researching, checking and references. Named sources and multiple where unique named are used. Read a great one from the Washington post I think where they had taken the time to interview and print the views from the Trump supporters at the rally – and not in a condescending way. They were also there covering the protest outside of the rally.

“I’ll give you some print media (tabloids) but most still do good journalism. Most report facts and most clearly label opinions.”

Totally disagree.

Papers are terrible, even local papers. They print anything to make sales and even if they wanted to get it right their circulations have dropped off a cliff which makes it impossible to research stories properly.

The media is appalling and the print media are by far the worst

I don’t agree as a generalisation. Some publications are very poor and always have been, but some papers are still doing proper reporting. Look at the stuff the Guardian did on the Panama papers, or the investigations the NY Times is doing on Trump.

There has been a general decline in the amount of old fashioned, original journalism because it is expensive. Papers can’t afford to keep the numbers of journos they used to, so more of your paper will be padded with recycled press releases.

Online media has the same problem. You still need to do the legwork and digging to stand up proper stories, however you publish your stuff.

Totally disagree.

Papers are terrible, even local papers.
Which mainstream broadsheets are you reading?

I also disagree with the assertion that the media or even the print media is appalling. Sure some of it is, but we know who they are. Certainly if the allegation is being made about local newspapers, then unless ours is completely unrepresentative, then that’s simply not true at all – I can say that having seen all sides of it – I know somebody who is a journo, I’ve had slight involvement in a few stories which have been placed and I’ve seen stories written by journos on which I know the inside track. About the only criticism you could make about local papers if it is one is how easy it is to place a story – I’m sure if you wanted and it was the sort of thing which gave you a thrill it would be really easy to get fake news into one (now there’s a challenge…), but then I don’t believe that does happen much.

FWIW I’ve also been featured in a few “sports documentary” programmes on TV, and whilst I was well aware even beforehand that it would be heavily edited to make it exciting, none of the programmes I’ve seen have actually been fake.

I want to check something out so can you answer a few questions for me.
You say the turtle story was on the 10, then the next day your regional news did the same story with a compleatly different take on it.
What’s your regional news programme?
I assume this is something that happened off the coast of the UK.
You reckon a couple of years ago, can you be more specific? It’ll just help me out if I can dig up anything

Thing is,what you describe just strikes me as so improbable I’d like to see for myself.

Yep that’s right

Local news would have been called Spotlight South West then I think.

It wasn’t a local event but there was a connection of some sort. I think it happened in the med. English was not the first language of the animal woman I mentioned earlier.

I said it was a few years ago but actually it can’t have been since 2009 cos I stopped watching TV then. Really, I don’t have the equipment to watch it even if I wanted to. So 2007 – 2009 I reckon.

It sounds improbable yeah. I can’t find anything on it but I’ll help you all I can to find out what you can, thanks for not instantly writing it off as my deluded conspiracy theory or something.

KCR linked to a similar news story above but that had to be later, maybe the Newquay connection’s the same though?

I think aracer nails it

FOr sure the media outlets have agendas – and some are far more politically or polemically written – I am thinking of when the DM did the ed traitor thing. The problem is they also write things they do not believe and they are not true but they are not quite lies. Laterally we seem to have sites that just cherry pick to the point they are misleading and folk are able to make sure they only get the “facts” they want.
IMHO the BBC, apart from being pro establishment British way of life gently left wing/libertarian. is impartial in fact i think its often a flaw as shown when they have a global warming person and a denier which often give undue weight to very minority/fringe views.

News can only be accurate if you see it with your own eyes.

Any other ways are filtered, interpreted, written with opinions by the reporter(s) then edited by someone else.

If BBC is trying it on then they are heading into the territory of fake news by trying to grab defeat from the jaw of success.

Channel 4 is already heading in that direction. I watch Channel 4 for sensational, dramatic reporters dramatising event and especially financial news. 😆

chewkw – Member
News can only be accurate if you see it with your own eyes.

Any other ways are filtered, interpreted, written with opinions by the reporter(s) then edited by someone else.
YUes but what you are trying so desperatly to imply is that news in inaccurate. It’s level of accuracy may vary but that is no reason to dismiss it and not to trust everyone.

mikewsmith – Member

chewkw – Member
News can only be accurate if you see it with your own eyes.
Any other ways are filtered, interpreted, written with opinions by the reporter(s) then edited by someone else.

YUes but what you are trying so desperatly to imply is that news in inaccurate. It’s level of accuracy may vary but that is no reason to dismiss it and not to trust everyone. [/quote]
They are inaccurate. Full stop.

They are merely reporting events according to their views and I am at their mercy of their interpretations.

If the reporter(s) have the same worldview as me then I will probably see more “accuracy” in them, but if they are not then probably fake news.

Just like you rely on the news you see fit because it suits your filter lens while the opposing views are completely blanked out. i.e. another fake news.

The question is how do you know who is right or who is wrong?

What makes you so sure one of them is right?

😆

They are merely reporting events according to their views and I am at their mercy of their interpretations.

If the reporter(s) have the same worldview as me then I will probably see more “accuracy” in them, but if they are not then probably fake news.
So only your view of the world is right? Despite most people seeming not to share it?
What about if somebody has collected information from a lot of sources, checked it’s accuracy then presented those facts to you?

#fakenews victims always seem to be the ones claiming everyone is lyeing to them…

mikewsmith – Member

They are merely reporting events according to their views and I am at their mercy of their interpretations.

If the reporter(s) have the same worldview as me then I will probably see more “accuracy” in them, but if they are not then probably fake news.
You have “forgotten” to quote the next paragraph …

Just like you rely on the news you see fit because it suits your filter lens while the opposing views are completely blanked out. i.e. another fake news.

See ^^^ … you see what you want to see or in this case you don’t want to see. Told you. 😆

So only your view of the world is right? Despite most people seeming not to share it?

Nope. My view of the world is not perfect but it is definitely not as messy as many others.

Share with who? I ain’t sharing with anyone nor do I force others to accept my view.

What about if somebody has collected information from a lot of sources, checked it’s accuracy then presented those facts to you?

Yes, I am fine with whatever they wish to collect but I still need to study their facts first before I accept them totally otherwise my acceptance of their facts is my responsibility and a risk I take.

#fakenews victims always seem to be the ones claiming everyone is lyeing to them…

Everyone is fake except me coz I am absolutely right. 😆

Guess if that’s fake or real ^^^.

Fake.

I think the BBC is one the best (the best?) media outlet but today brings a classic howler from them.

The headline screams about cuts and the tone of the article howls about cuts yet half way down the article they acknowledge that centralising treatment improves outcomes.

I’ve been in a position recently where I could choose to have a OP in a local hospital with a few staff with the right specialism or in a massive teaching hospital – it’s a no brainier.

Put it another way, would you want to divide up a larger centralized Neurology department over a large number of different locations in the interests of creating new hospitals?

So utterly misleading.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39031546

The rapidly widening gap between headlines – sensationalised to captures attention – and the facts in articles is a growing trend and a legacy of pretending the there is/we need 24 hour news.

I did laugh at that article when it was posted in the Brexshit thread for the same reason.

The headline screams about cuts and the tone of the article howls about cuts yet half way down the article they acknowledge that centralising treatment improves outcomes.

Saw this on the telly today and knew instantly from the way their ‘research’ was presented that at least half the changes being presented as financially-driven would be actually outcome-driven. But the story only leads the news if that nuance is buried.

Declaring an interest, as a former health writer for BBC News Online, basically there has always been a tension between a push for over-simplification for other outlets and proper digging into the stats to tell the real story. Back in the day when Ceefax was a thing, you had to write the whole story in four paragraphs, regardless of its complexity (You also had to have a headline of exactly the right length, which created its own problems of over-simplification).

In this case, there are undoubtedly stories of service changes in their survey which are financially motivated and arguably to the detriment of patient care, but the need for a big headline loses them in the mix, and ends up misleading the public.

Back in the day when Ceefax was a thing, you had to write the whole story in four paragraphs, regardless of its complexity.

It seems one of the things that has happened to the BBC website over the past 4 or 5 years is that it has re-adopted that approach, and over the past 12 months or so started using really crap “information videos” not videos of something actually happening but wasting the viewers time to put over what would be a paragraph of basic information with crappy visuals and sound effects.

outofbreath – Member

I think the BBC is one the best (the best?) media outlet but today brings a classic howler from them.

The headline screams about cuts and the tone of the article howls about cuts yet half way down the article they acknowledge that centralising treatment improves outcomes.

But then it goes on to point out that the sort of centralisation that improves outomes actually costs money, and the funding that’s supposed to deliver that has already been spent to cover defecits.

And also, some of the cuts aren’t about centralisation at all- there’s a total reduction of beds in Nottingham frinstance

there’s a total reduction of beds in Nottingham frinstance

Again, that’s an oversimplification. The Nottingham plans are looking to close acute beds but are contingent on the equivalent capacity being created in community settings. So, while it may well be pie in the sky, the idea is not to lose capacity, just transfer patients into a far more appropriate (and cost-effective) setting.

The NHS is a perfect example of the problems of a massively complex system. Every reform, even supposedly cost-neutral one, brings unintended consequences.

Ironically, the bosses spent most of the last couple of decades getting rid of community hospitals aimed at those they didn’t want clogging up acute beds. But then, they were ageing infrastructure which required major investment to continue.

Frankly, it’s hard to communicate much of that complexity to a casual news audience – most of the people who work within it don’t fully understand how the gears turn, but just hear the horrible grinding noise in their particular part of the engine.

Journalism isn’t about simply presenting facts and nothing else, although basis in fact is important. It’s about presenting a report on news and events, and often opinion, tailored for the audience. That means media outlets will trim the news and flower it, possibly exaggerate, and present maybe with a bias based on the audience they appeal to, especially in the printed press or on channels such as Fox News (but even BBC and Sky have a bias).

Sampling news from a wide range of news outlets gives a better idea of what the actual news is and the facts. Even looking at other obviously biased news channels (RT for example) gives you an alternate look on things. RT is massively biased obviously, but they do cover things the western media will ignore. Just filter out the pro-Putin angle and dubious quoted facts and there is actual news in there and sometimes you see where the Beeb and others are actually skewing things a bit too much the other way. Fox though is a struggle to get anything of value out of.

Even news source agencies are biased at times though (Reuters, AP etc), but the information itself is generally more reliable but the report may be presented with a bias.

The way reporting exaggerates or even makes up some things (or misrepresents) is all the more clear with coverage of local issues that you may know something about. Been a number of times where I could see inaccuracies, though often it’s just mistakes because they have one reporter who spent a short time interviewing people and hasn’t quite got the facts right. Then it’s presented in a sensational style (GetSurrey does this a lot).

martinhutch – Member

Again, that’s an oversimplification. The Nottingham plans are looking to close acute beds but are contingent on the equivalent capacity being created in community settings. So, while it may well be pie in the sky, the idea is not to lose capacity, just transfer patients into a far more appropriate (and cost-effective) setting.

Which is great but the community care that relies on, is getting worse not better and there seems to be no money or desire to fix that or even admit it’s a problem.

Indeed – but the blanket term ‘cuts’ is a misrepresentation. There’s nothing to cut anymore. It’s like trying to fix a knackered motor, you patch it up at one end, and oil starts pissing out of somewhere new.

You think the BBC could communicate and deliver a pan-BBC fake news agenda? Hahaha! Have you watched W1A?

Have you watched W1A?

I’ve lived it.

Related to that, what really grinds my gears about TV news reporting is when they spend their time soliciting the opinions of passersby. The most recent I remember is the kid being killed in Topshop – they spent a few minutes showing reactions from mums with kids. Apart from it being rather insensitive, I really don’t give a **** what some random person who just happens to live nearby thinks about it – what exactly does it add to the story? I suppose as in this case it’s mostly used when they don’t have much else to report (they wasted another minute on footage of the outside of the shop with shutters down, telling us they didn’t know whether any staff were still inside). But in that case why can’t they just report what they do know and move onto another story. It’s not like there’s a shortage of news.

The ascendency of the Fake News meme directly correlates to the rise of alternative news sources and the exponential growth in market share accrued from what was once very much a monopoly – Yesteryear’s hegemonic news corporations less and less able to project a consensus narrative charged the emerging competition as ‘Fake News’ but did not envisage such accusations being turned ironically on themselves – Semantics aside does the BBC subvert , propagandize and withhold news ? Unequivocally yes – denial of this is strictly the preserve of useful idiots and shills . .

Related to that, what really grinds my gears about TV news reporting is when they spend their time soliciting the opinions of passersby. The most recent I remember is the kid being killed in Topshop – they spent a few minutes showing reactions from mums with kids. Apart from it being rather insensitive, I really don’t give a **** what some random person who just happens to live nearby thinks about it – what exactly does it add to the story? I suppose as in this case it’s mostly used when they don’t have much else to report (they wasted another minute on footage of the outside of the shop with shutters down, telling us they didn’t know whether any staff were still inside). But in that case why can’t they just report what they do know and move onto another story. It’s not like there’s a shortage of news.

At least they solicited opinions from people instead of making a news story about the twitter reaction to the incident, which I find the BBC to be one of the worst offenders for.

Try Channel 4 financial news … They (mostly she) are so dramatic it’s better than watching Dallas. 😆