The media, and the desire to "scoop"

Author: fauxlaw

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fauxlaw
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The desire to scoop has completely overwhelmed the media to the extent that they throw caution to the wind, get an inkling of a story, and, if it cannot be properly vetted within a few hours, they give up on the attempt and publish as is; sometimes, creating elements of the story out of pure fiction, assuming they’re right.

Recent history says they usually are not even close to the truth. After all, it seems they can just retract the story, and all is forgiven. They can repeat with a revolving door to the retraction confessional, if they bother to do even that. Nonsense.

Case in point: When Jesus was confronted by the scribes who dragged in tow a woman caught in flagrante committing adultery, and Jesus said to the scribes that he who was without sin could cast the first stone, the scribes walked away, accused and self-convicting. To the woman, he did not merely say: “You are forgiven,” he also said, “Go, and sin no more.”

The media are like the scribes, willing to be shamed. But then, they ignore the point that they should not do it again.
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@fauxlaw
it cannot be properly vetted within a few hours, they give up on the attempt and publish as is; sometimes, creating elements of the story out of pure fiction, assuming they’re right.

Recent history says they usually are not even close to the truth.
Can you provide three prominent recent examples?
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@fauxlaw
I think the type of news reporting you are referring to is "breaking news",  which usually relies on sketchy eye witness accounts and is mostly reporting on what the current rumour is, as opposed to reporting on established official facts.
In almost every single breaking news event those rumours get misconstrued as "facts" by certain individuals. Especially conspiracy theorists that accuse news channels of having initially told the truth, just to later be forced by tptb to change the story. Examples of this can be found in almost every single conspiracy theory from Sandy Hook to the Saudi air line pilots that were "apparently" found alive on 9/11.

There are indeed major criticisms regarding this type of news reporting as 24hour news channels are under a great amount of pressure to fill air time and they often find themselves reporting on live events that turn out to be relatively minor and they never return to the story with updates, and so their initial rumour mongering remain as the only correspondence available and can be misconstrued as fake news. Conspiracy theorists would say "lies".