A List That Is Sure To Grow

As bloggers, we are used to discovering mistakes, omissions, and outright lies peddled by the media. Scott Thomas Beauchamp was just the newest entry into an ever growing list of journalistic malpractice. Randall Hoven @ The American Thinker has compiled a list of such acts. No, I will not cite his list, which contains over sixty entries of this sort of journalism the media has been carrying out, perpetually, going back to the days of Walter Duranty. His point is taken, and should be observed by readers:

This is not solely about Scott Beauchamp, and his fiasco with the New Republic will not be the last instance to grace this list.

The media is sick. That is the only way to describe it. They have gotten away with this sort of sloppy, inaccurate reporting for decades. This was not something new that just popped up, and while Walter Duranty set the low bar of excellence for the media, So many have come up through the ranks to match his skills at propaganda.

The reason that it has become prominent, even mainstream, dare I say, is because they are getting caught much quicker and easier. The blogosphere and alternative media, in general, has made it a point to examine news. We have to because we rely on it as much as anyone else does. But whereas the vast majority of news is inherently biased, it is only on the odd occasion when they get caught lying, fabricating, plagiarizing, or what have you.

Mr. Hoven closes his piece with five observations that bear repeating:

--These offenses have been going on for years, long before the Internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?

--In a good number of these cases, the errors were caught by non-journalists, sometimes communicating over the Internet.

--If it is "too good to be true", or just too politically correct to be true, take it with a grain of salt - several grains, apparently, if from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, CNN or Reuters.

--The Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize just ain't all they're cracked up to be.

--If this is the visible part of the iceberg, just how big is the iceberg?

Indeed.

Marcie