Journalism: Held Hostage
I don't know if I've told this story on the internet before, but here goes.
I remember when I was in grade school, maybe about 8 or 9 years old, my teacher told the class that "in Russia, the news only can say what the government wants it to say. Here in America, we have freedom of speech, so the news can say anything." I remember feeling proud to be an American.
Now, the press sounds more and more like government propaganda every day. And with the attacks on public broadcasting, I'm wondering how much more we'll have to look like Reagan's Evil Empire before people start getting upset.
Latest example: the Iranian president hostage scandal. Here's MSNBC's take on the story, which is filled with hearsay from former US hostages who claim that Iran's new president was among their captors back in the 70's. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure these former hostages really believe what they're saying, and I have nothing against them. Oh, and the new Iranian president is a scumbag and clearly his election was a fraud. Too bad we in the US have no credibility when it comes to elections of presidents.
BBC News tells a much different story about this hostage taking business. While acknowledging the fact that some former hostages are confident about the president's identity as a captor, they note that the photographic evidence suggests that the dude in question is much taller than the president and looks nothing like the president's other pictures from the 70's. And, they note that even some of the president's harshest critics (who would have reason to impugn him as a former hostage taker) have said that there is no way that the president was a hostage taker. Boom. Case closed. That's investigative journalism, folks.
I remember when I was in grade school, maybe about 8 or 9 years old, my teacher told the class that "in Russia, the news only can say what the government wants it to say. Here in America, we have freedom of speech, so the news can say anything." I remember feeling proud to be an American.
Now, the press sounds more and more like government propaganda every day. And with the attacks on public broadcasting, I'm wondering how much more we'll have to look like Reagan's Evil Empire before people start getting upset.
Latest example: the Iranian president hostage scandal. Here's MSNBC's take on the story, which is filled with hearsay from former US hostages who claim that Iran's new president was among their captors back in the 70's. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure these former hostages really believe what they're saying, and I have nothing against them. Oh, and the new Iranian president is a scumbag and clearly his election was a fraud. Too bad we in the US have no credibility when it comes to elections of presidents.
BBC News tells a much different story about this hostage taking business. While acknowledging the fact that some former hostages are confident about the president's identity as a captor, they note that the photographic evidence suggests that the dude in question is much taller than the president and looks nothing like the president's other pictures from the 70's. And, they note that even some of the president's harshest critics (who would have reason to impugn him as a former hostage taker) have said that there is no way that the president was a hostage taker. Boom. Case closed. That's investigative journalism, folks.
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