Posted on 10/13/2005 7:56:00 AM PDT by mdittmar
"Can the News REALLY be Fair, Accurate and Objective?" asked the title of the first lecture in the 2005-2006 George E. McCammon Memorial Distinguished Speaker Series.
"Yes," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president, news coverage CBS News, speaking at McKendree College in Lebanon on Tuesday night.
Her answer was not surprising because she is in charge of news coverage for CBS, a television network that prides itself on those values despite a couple of recent problems.
"My job is to pay really close attention to the news, to watch closely and care about it," McGinnis said.
She said fair, accurate and objective are not interchangeable but are interdependent.
"Accuracy must come first," she said. "Fair and objective will flow outward from that."
It was only in later questioning after her talk that she addressed the Dan Rather case in which the network anchor was involved with a discredited report about President Bush's National Guard service, saying that was a "60 Minutes" report and not under her jurisdiction.
She said the network is attempting to learn from its mistakes. It launched an investigation into the episode.
"It had a huge effect," she said. "It was nothing short of devastating." McGinnis said one of her responsibilities is to play devil's advocate with each and every news report, helping keep opinion separate from fact. The network works hard to avoid giving subtle impressions in reports that can affect how people perceive the news.
She said that early in the Hurricane Katrina coverage, she made the decision to use the term evacuee instead of refugee for people fleeing the destruction.
"I caught some grief," she said. But she added that the decision was met with approval by many who thought refugee had a negative connotation.
It is the nature of cramming all the news into a 30-minute television slot that means that everything that happens does not get equal play or even get covered, McGinnis said.
But there can be balance and, above all, impartiality.
"If you concern oneself with reporting, rather than how that reporting is received, letting sides have their say with objective, fair analysis, you are likely on your way to achieving fairness," she said.
"Keep your eyes on the story and the truth will emerge.
"Can news be fair, accurate and objective? With good-faith effort I think it can be."
Following the theme for this year's lecture series, "The Fourth Estate: Ethics, Responsibility and Commitment of the Media," the other two lectures will feature Bob Levey on Feb. 2 and Chris Wallace on March 6.
Wally Spiers' column runs five days a week. Have a column idea? Call Wally at 239-2506 or (800) 642-3878; or e-mail: wspiers@bnd.com
Sure it CAN be fair, it's just not.
"Can the News REALLY be Fair"
At CBS?? Uh, no.
Sheesh. Most any FReeper can do that, cheaper and better.
100% Bass-ackwards.
And the results of that investigation are .... ? It shouldn't take a year to answer a few simple questions.
Who gave Dan Rather and Mary Mapes that memo? Why did they claim that they were real when the only thing that could have made them more obviously fake would have been doing them in crayon? Was Dan's daughter Robin involved, which would explain why Dan went down with the ship? What were Rather's and Mapes' incoming and outgoing phone calls before and immediately after the report?
Where is the "LYING SACK OF DOO-DOO" warning on this?
"a television network that prides itself on those values despite a couple of recent problems."
LOL. Sure, "problems" like deliberately using forged docs to influence a presidential election. Minor thing.
BTW, the three who were "asked" to resign, they still at CBS?
"Journalists" beware: hide your press credentials if you don't want to be spit on.
The facts are friendly.
If the Killian memos were real, there would have been nothing wrong with reporting on them. However, they were obviously false, and they were relied on anyway.
Report on what is actually going on in the real world, without trying to shape opinion, and people may start to trust you. But as long as the MSM tries to push the story in a certain direction, they will never be trusted again.
I haven't noticed much change in SeeBS since Rat Rather got caught. How bout hiring a balanced number of people from across the spectrum and then a dose of someone who can differentiate real truth from political spinning/lying. What passes today as two sides of an issue is often more like one side feels justified to lie, while the other attempts to reveal the truth, which is often painful for the liars. This is all part of clouding the issue of right and wrong, truth and lies, as all part of the same thing.
One of the many liberals I used to work with in a TV newsroom almost 20 years ago admitted there was no way
he could be "objective," but he could be "fair." This
lady talks about accuracy being first but I think the
MSM just rehashes cliches that have no accuracy whatsoever
like "constitutional separation of church and state" or
"hard-line conservative" or "increasing insurgency in
Iraq." There's no accuracy in any of these phrases, just
opinion disguised as news.
"McGinnis said one of her responsibilities is to...keep opinion separate from fact."
Selective reporting, duration, emphasis and focus of CBS news stories is so obviously biased that I can scarcely believe anyone would even utter such a ridiculous statement. The hypocrisy is staggering. They'll never begin to restore their crediblity until they admit their news has been agenda driven since Watergate.
Ah, but what term do we remember best from the forged-memos scandal? That the memos were "accurate" even though they were simply poor forgeries.
Incidentally, that "we only have 30 minutes" comment is a pretty lame way to excuse away errors of omission.
My 2 cents is that the Networks and print media just can't grasp the fact that by the time their stories air or are printed, a vast percentage of Americans have already read varing accounts of the story, editorials about it and have already formed an opinion on the matter.
Network news comes along and offers a watered down version of the story along with their opinion and it's nothing provocative or new for those who are already in the "know".
"McGinnis said one of her responsibilities is to play devil's advocate with each and every news report, helping keep opinion separate from fact"
What I think they truly don't get is that - since they all share a liberal mindset - they can't even begin to play the devil's advocate roll with any conviction.
LOL -- trying to pass off these documents as genuine 1973 TANG memos is like trying to pass off Plan Nine From Outer Space clips as genuine UFO photographs.
It's there!,it's spelled cbs.;)
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