“ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, the network’s White House correspondent, recently provoked controversy after his exclusive report that quoted emails which allegedly showed the Obama administration made numerous edits to, and scrubbed information from the talking points on Benghazi. He said that ABC News had reviewed emails in question, but it was later revealed that the quotes were actually from a source claiming to have summarized the emails, and were misleading.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/19/jonathan-karl-benghazi-regrets_n_3302891.html
The problem with apologies for errors in the Media is that they don’t get much publicity; errors too often serve a purpose and live on long after the apology is forgotten.
Polls showing 62% of Americans believe the once media lie that Saddam was responsible for 911; that is testimony to the ignorance of Americans. In comparing American news media with the rest of the world’s media, the American media appears clearly grossly inaccurate.
American reporters often claim that they report accurately but news editors edit it. American news is apparently edited in a specific way because American news media is owned by Corporate America, media profits are derived from advertising by Corporate America, and consequently the news is edited by Corporate America to serve Corporate America’s desires and needs. In all honesty, Corporate America actually does have a selfish interest in what the news is! It is rather bizarre for Americans to believe everything upon news disseminated by an entity what has a selfish interest in the news and to rely on that source of news as infallible and worthy of the Right to publish whatever they damn well please by virtue of Freedom of the Press without any disclaimer at all.
America’s claim to freedom of the press, should contain a disclaimer that freedom of the press pertains only to the freedom for Corporate America to publish any and only the news which is beneficial to Corporate America. American Freedom of the Press has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY KIND OF FREEDOM FOR AMERICA’S PEOPLE TO GET ACCURATE NEWS FROM THE MEDIA.
In other parts of the world, news media has to SELL their newspapers or TV to customers to earn profits; in America news media gives papers and TV away free, to get an audience big enough to attract big and wealthy advertisers to earn media profits; that is what capitalism is about!
There is nothing wrong with capitalism, but the American People need to know what they’re getting from their capitalistic economy, capitalistic society, and the extremely capitalistic media and WHAT THEY ARE NOT GETTING!
From 2000 to 2005, I lived as a resident alien in Switzerland; that experience allowed me to observe America from the outside looking in. I read European newspapers, watched news on European TV and I read American newspapers on the internet; the news in America was very different in America than the news in Europe. In retrospect, I was convinced that European news proved to be much more reliable and accurate than American news.
Believing in American democracy, the Bill of Rights, and the Freedom of the Press Amendment, it was difficult for me to accept the fact that the American People were being kept ignorant of what was going on in the world, including the part that America was playing in it. However, I have become a reluctant believer in the fact that the American media has dumbed-down the American Public.
Since 2005 and my return to live in America, I have tried to sound an alarm about American media, to no avail. Americans seemingly believe anything they hear or read from whatever source they see or hear; they believe it is truth and nothing but the truth, claiming that America’s Freedom of the Press guarantees them honest and accurate reporting and publication of the news. Americans also vehemently claim that “all the rest of the world’s news media are wrong”, because foreign media do not have access to America’s Freedom of the Press! Hmmmm! It is certainly difficult to argue with that, isn’t it?