Absorbed In Untruths

I’ve never really considered that the news I might be reading daily could be false but a study by George Washington University and Cision found that “89% of journalists turn to blogs for research, 65% to social media sites like Facebook, 52% to Twitter, Wikipedia over 6/10 (61%) consult it.” I myself would not consider any of those resources overly reliable. After reading this article I will definitely look at news stories differently, I’ve always considered the newspaper to be a one hundred percent factual source without much thought put into it.

I was shocked by bother articles “Jimmy’s World” shocked me because I don’t understand how Janet Cook could think that the Washington area wouldn’t react to the fact that an eight year old of their community was hooked on heroin. She must have expected backlash and further questioning on her article. I could also understand that the pressure to succeed in such a fast past world as journalism over came her and pushed her to fabricate the story, still I wouldn’t consider that an excuse. I was equally shocked by the story on Stephan Harper; he is our prime minister talking trash about him in a newspaper was obviously going to cause an up roar. I think even if he had pocketed the Body of Christ it would be an inappropriate article because he was in fact at a funeral.

Journalist Jack Shafer writes “most liars make things up for the simple reason that they don't have the talent or the ability to get the story any other way.” I don’t necessarily agree with this quotation, Obviously the Editor that made the error in the Stephan Harper story and Janet Cook were talented journalist because they got the job with the Telegraph Journal and the Washington Post in the first place so they must have had some talent. I do think that universities should be doing a better job at graduating journalist who can handle the responsibility but at the same time I doubt that it was the universities fault but the fault of the environment the journalist were in and perhaps the fact that the two who made the error were not mature enough to handle the responsibility.

I think in the situation of the Harper story a ombudsman would of helped the situation greatly because it is probable that the story would have never been published. The “Jimmy’s World” story on the other hand I wonder if the error would have been picked up before it was published or until after the public started to complain. People make mistakes but I have sympathy for both journalist who lost their jobs because of a error.