[Timesink]

Yeah, so he's a Democrat. But at least he admits it and got his cheap shot out of the way up front. The rest of his article is apolitical, and dead on correct: Reporters in general are ignorant of the subjects they cover, and too lazy to do even the most basic research before writing their "factual" articles.

[Timesink]

Schadenfreude

This is the New York Times BBC Schadenfreude Ping List. Freepmail me to be added or dropped.

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This is the Mainstream Media Shenanigans ping list. Please freepmail me to be added or dropped.
Please note this is a medium- to high-volume list.
Please feel free to ping me if you come across a thread you would think worthy of this ping list. I can't catch them all!

[Elliott Jackalope]

Can reporters get ANYTHING right?

No, they can't.

Next question?

[CFC__VRWC]

Reporters in general are ignorant of the subjects they cover, and too lazy to do even the most basic research before writing their "factual" articles.

Besides which, he works for the BBC. Once he was able to connect enough dots to come out with "The Internet's running out of room because America's selfishly hogging all the addresses!", he and his editor figured they had their story, and they sure as hell weren't going to let facts and the inability to use a calculator get in the way of that.

[zeugma]

Not counting the factual subject of the articles (the scare-mongering about IP addresses), this article hits really closely to a subject that is near and dear to my heart that I've written about several times here on FR and elsewhere.

The media always get it wrong. This simple sweeping generalization can be easily proven by just about anyone. You see, everyone has some subject that they know a lot about. A given person may be a complete drooling idiot (CDI) about everything else in the universe, but I'm willing to bet that if questioned closely, that same CDI is going to have one subject that is near and dear to his heart. Let's hypothetically say that you are having a discussion with the CDI in question. After quite a bit of probing you discover that for some strange reason, he knows a hell of a lot about pine cones. Why? We don't care for the purposes of my illustration. Let's just say that where he grew up there were thousands of pine trees, and he was attacked by a storm of pine cones one windy day. Now, if you start asking him to recall anything may have seen, heard, or read (if he can read) about pine cones anywhere in the media. I'll bet you just about anything that he'll remember a couple of bits of reportage of some kind. Then ask him if the media got the basic facts about pine cones correct in any meaningful way. I will bet you a serious chunk of change that he'll be jumping up and down yelling about how "those dang reporters don't know nothin about pine cones!"

The point being, if the press is always so wrong about that one subject that you or the CDI knows about, why the heck should you trust anything else they say?

[stands2reason]

bttt

[Free_at_last_-2001]

Readers reasonably expect the BBC to report reality... - Wow when did this happen?