Why don't newspapers check their stories?

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Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:34 pm

Such as this one
No 1960s domestic equipment had LED displays and touch pads. It would only have taken the journalist a minute to google on "Panasonic NE-691" and find out that it's a 1984 model.

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:43 pm

Hey, we're selling newspapers, we write about the news or make it if we have to, but where did we mention that the facts are real? It's always someones opinion they post there and not all people are equal Laughing

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 10:44 pm

The answer is easy: checking a story is work... Wink

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:05 pm

If newspapers (and the media in general) checked their facts we wouldn't need Media Watch and Snopes.com would have a lot less work to do.

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:08 pm

As much as I tend to believe most things I read, though I'm often sceptical about spin being put on the story, the few times in my life I've read a newspaper article about an event where I was actually there, or involved, there were gross inaccuracies, that the average reader would knot have known about.

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:09 pm

Researching on something that is too difficult will leave frustrated and wastes valuable time.

* I did this will Hokkaido-ben, I don't recommend searching google for 5+ hours for something that doesn't give you much to begin with.

Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:35 pm

if only foxnews checked their sources as well... like the american public

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:04 am

^^Your bias is showing.

Most "news outlets" get their information from one or two central sources. They just transfer what they got directly as "their" report. Some do put their own "spin" on the things they report.

As I think about it deeper, most of us put our own spin on everything we do. It is called a World View. Some places just have a World View that doesn't include checking the facts... Confused

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:31 am

never let the truth, get in the way of a good story.

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:30 am

"Believe none of what you read and only half of what you see"

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:44 am

Or by puting a hook "spin" on it Wink

There is none so blind as those that choose not to listen

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 7:31 pm

It seems to me to be the same gullibility that causes people to fall for scams.
It's clearly not 1960s technology, yet the story's all over the Internet.

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

The first microwaves I saw in the 70s did not have displays like that but big whacking dials.
And no turntables

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 12:46 am

We have a 1981 'Thermatronic' (love the name) microwave that was part of the original equipment on our boat. Yup, it has dials and big push buttons. That Panasonic from the news article looks way more modern than mine.

Mine still runs well, but just in case I don't stand close to it when it's running. Wink

.

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 4:27 am

Just Jane wrote:

We have a 1981 'Thermatronic' (love the name) microwave
Mine still runs well, but just in case I don't stand close to it when it's running. Wink

.

Mfd by Thermador I believe. (I used to sell appliances.)

I think your caution is well placed. Shocked

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 8:38 am

Sloppy reporting really annoys me.

I've just watched a report on our TV news tonight about an armed offender confrontation on Friday where the offender challenged a truck driver with a sawn off .22 calibre rifle. The TV News advertised the segment with the description that they were interviewing the truck driver who had been threatened with a "sawn off shotgun".

They obviously recognised that the weapon had it's barrel and stock shortened, but incorrectly assumed that it had to be a shotgun.

The fact that an innocent bystander was killed by a shot, and for a while it wasn't sure if he'd been killed by the offender or by the armed police on the scene, didn't clarify matters. If the victim had been killed by a shotgun then there would definitely have been no confusion.

I put it down to plain laziness, or that the pressures of meeting a deadline don't allow time for checking facts.

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 2:57 pm

ScamViking wrote:

The answer is easy: checking a story is work... Wink

And work costs money. Money better spent on covering the 2000 Obama stories. Smile

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