Erik DeBill
New member
Ben Rubinstein said:I'm all for the media to report on the truth but to skew it or misreport it to satisfy an agenda is evil. Let's be honest, who are the most powerful people on this planet today? The people who are controlling the minds of the masses? I promise you it isn't the governments of the West. It is the heads of the media and they should reflect on the responsibility of their postions.
Cartier Bresson complained about the ability to misuse photos by editors back in an essay written in the thirties. This is far more the case nowadays and I'm sure that many news photographers are being taken advantage of by the cherry picking of their photos to fit a story decided by an editor.
I'll agree that intentionally misreporting news is bad, but (leaving aside the current case in Lebanon) there is a long tradition of biased reporting to champion one cause or another. Political reporters digging for dirt rarely target all sides equally - they have an axe to grind. This is entirely natural and I think it's counterproductive to pretend that reporters can actually be unbiased.
Worse than being biased towards one side is going too far to try and present both sides and thus giving undeserved credibility to one side. This has been a major problem with reportage in the US for the last decade or so, particularly when religious and business groups protest scientific findings. If the investigation of the health risks from tobacco was handled in the same way we'd still be hearing that "some scientists think that rather than causing cancer, tobacco smoke actually encourages good health".
I do draw the line at manufacturing evidence, "facts" and news in general, though. Reporters are there to report. I can accept that they may only look in certain places or choose not to mention some things, but when they make things up or use things that they know are untrue then they're just producing entertainment or propaganda.