Gullible Journalists

[Tyler Durden]

John Kelsey wrote...

"For some reason I've never been able to fathom, many journalists seem to be remarkably gullable, when they're told something from the right kind of source, especially a government agency or other official source."

Chomsky (dig around on http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm) and others have commented on this quite a bit. What it seems to boil down to is a sort of natural selection. Basically, it works like this:

1) Government is releasing some cool smart-bomb commercials, erh I mean video to a few select news sources.
2) NBC sends a questioning, smart, well-informed dude to said press conference.
3) During said smart-bomb footage notices the Arabic word for Hospital on the top of the smart-bombs target, and asks "Is that a hospital?"
4) Government takes NBC off list of cool "insider" info: "Can't be trusted, not playing ball"
5) NBC, now out in the cold, assigns said informed journalist to covering Ruwanda or other low-profile stuff, and assures military officials that they'll send someone a little more cooperative next time.

I'm exagerating for effect here of course...there's possibly not as much conscious decision making, and supposedly this kind of list-making happens for much quieter, "insider" stuff (not smart bomb footage). But clearly, there's got to be SOMETHING like this happening.

-TD





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