Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Why Nothing From the News Media Can Be Trusted

If true, it's an accident, especially now that the famous video  of a polar bear dying because of climate change has now been admitted as deceptively captioned:
One year later, National Geographic has finally admitted to facilitating "fake news" regarding climate change. The magazine's most viral video ever, which featured heart-wrenching images of a starving polar bear, perpetuated the narrative that the animal's imminent death was caused by climate change. However, the climate change aspect of the story is void of any real evidence."We had lost control of the narrative," admitted Cristina Mittermeier, the photographer of the polar bear. Mittermeier explained the climate change deception in a piece titled "Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong" for the magazine's August issue.Mittermeier conceded that the images of the bony, emaciated polar bear were meant to sound an alarm about climate change, though she complains that people took the image "literally."

2 comments:

  1. I find it amusing that it seems like just recently people have started to view (or at least talk about) "the media" with suspicion.

    I have not trusted the media ever, not once, in my entire adult life. I have always viewed it as just another commodity being sold, and with no greater verisimilitude than that of used cars being hawked by a chain-smoking, greasy-haired, gold-chain wearing huckster.

    Trusted? You mean trusted like Walter Cronkite “the most trusted man in America”, who created out of whole cloth the premise that the U.S., had essentially lost in Vietnam due to the Tet offensive. The facts, easily verified, were that the Viet Cong were dealt a disastrous defeat as a result of that action: "even the North Vietnamese admitted they suffered a terrible defeat," losing around 40,000 of the roughly 80,000 regular army and Viet Cong soldiers committed to Tet.

    Cronkite's words were taken to heart by N. VN General No Nguyen Giap, and at a time when he and his command staff were ready to sue for peace, decided that with help from the U. S. media, they could survive and win the war.

    I accord the media the same respect as I do Jane Fonda; the only thing I would give them is a cigarette and a blindfold.

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  2. Even some fairly liberal people that I have known realize that journalism is not much of a truth-oriented craft. A friend joined me to see a beached California Gray Whale rotting on Malibu Beach. His brother had a forehead scratch. The reporter asked if there was a connection. Joking, he said the whale bit his brother. Now the whale was so far dead that the smell was overpowering, but the "bit his forehead" was in the news story the next day. As he put it, "Almost anything you see reported about which you have personal or professional knowledge is either wrong or so shallow as to be meaningless."

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