Absolutely required reading, along those very lines. :)
Posted on 08/15/2004 5:06:06 AM PDT by bad company
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Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004
On Kerry, news services play catch-up
YVETTE WALKER READERS' REPRESENTATIVE
Some of you think the paper isn't doing its job of covering Sen. John Kerry and the controversy surrounding his military record.
Last week, readers called and wrote in, saying The Star hasn't covered critics' assertions that:
1) Kerry's claim of being in Cambodia on Christmas of 1968 was a lie; and that
2) One of the swift boat veterans says he was misquoted by the Boston Globe, and is still fully behind the anti-Kerry movement.
True, The Star hadn't published either of these news items as of Friday. By Friday afternoon however, the paper corrected itself and assigned a reporter to write the story. It ran Saturday.
Why the delay? The answer has to do with credibility. The Star had been waiting for credible sources to move stories over the news wire, which is how most of the news about national politics gets in the paper. When these sources were slow to act, editors felt they had to.
Star editors point out that last week they asked national news wires to provide stories about statements from Kerry and the swift boat veterans. “We are sensitive to the need to address this,” said Darryl Levings, national editor at The Star.
The only criticism here might be that editors waited too long to act. How long is too long? It's a difficult question to answer, and the fact that editors recognized the need for the story and assigned the task is laudable. Readers should also be praised for voicing concerns about the lack of a story.
The Star subscribes to several news wire services — the aforementioned credible sources — including Knight Ridder (The Star's parent company), The Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post wire services.
On Friday, a Google News search turned up dozens of references to the Kerry stories. Many of them were on fringe news and personal Internet pages, sites that The Star and other mainstream media don't recognize as credible by themselves. Such news must be verified, preferably with two independent sources. That doesn't always happen on Internet sites, talk radio and cable TV news shows — even though such electronic media often are far ahead of other traditional news media in reporting controversy.
Sometimes the early reports do get it right. When that happens, traditional news media look like slowpokes. As with other celebrity and political news stories, electronic media frequently move faster than print news does. That's because they don't always have the system of checks and balances newspapers require.
The readers' representative can be reached at (816) 234-4487 from 8:30 a.m. to noon weekdays, or at
readerrep@kcstar.com.
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© 2004 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com
LOL!! Kinda says it all, doesn't it?
They'll be waiting indefinitely. These supposedly credible sources moved, on the news wire, the lie that Elliott had retracted part of his affidavit. Did the paper sit on that? Nope. They repeated and helped spread the lie.
Wire's credibility is no good. Paper's credibility is no good.
Now then, can anyone tell me what the "reliable source" was for Rush's drug problem and how long it took to hit the papers?
"The Star subscribes to several news wire services — the aforementioned credible sources — including Knight Ridder (The Star's parent company), The Associated Press, and the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post wire services."
Credible sources?? No wonder the print media never gets it right (but usually gets it left).
1.) MoveOn.org.
2.) Before the last echo could fade away into nothingness. :)
Apparently so. I'm reading Arrogance by Bernard Goldberg and he related an incident where a member of a news organization was on-site when an earthquake occured and he called it in...but his bosses wouldn't let him get the cameras up and running until it was verified over the wire. How dumb is that?
"The Star had been waiting for credible sources to move stories"
Not a crock. It says, the "credible" news wires are biased, left leaning, let's elect Kerry sources and they weren't running anything to harm Kerry.
More evidence to support your lawsuit ping.
They seem to find "credible sources" for just about anything bad for GWB.
With this lazy "see what the Times says" attitude, it won't be be many years until the "mainstream" press will be considered fringe news. The "mainstream" press is no longer credible to a large percentage of the country as is. And the presstitutes' extreme and open advocacy of Kerry isn't repairing any of the damage they've already done to themselves.
Obviously you cannot rely on your own sight. You must verify, verify, verify. You know those newspapers are so trustworthy.
LOL, they didn't believe their own reporter who was right in the middle of it. This is good news, folks. If it doesn't get on the leftwing wires, it isn't happening, so, if they just don't report on, say, Charley, no disaster, no problem.
Absolutely required reading, along those very lines. :)
Meanwhile, the same people have no problem reporting the lies of Palestinians, feminists, eco-Nazis, the Clintons, the French.
It's the Orwellian memory hole, only much less competent and intelligent.
I am beginning to suspect that the mainstream media is fully aware that sKerry is full of sh!t on his Vietnam record, and knowing that sKerry has based his entire campaign on those 4 months, realize that to expose that record will end the current horse race for the presidency.
The media sells conflict, if the sKerry campaign implodes now, there is little for them to write about between now and November.
While I'm sure a lot of the reluctance is ideological, I suspect an at least equal portion of their reluctance is job security.
Many of them were on fringe news and personal Internet pages, sites that The Star and other mainstream media don't recognize as credible by themselves. Such news must be verified, preferably with two independent sources.
The "preferably" gives them the weasel room that these elite media types need to run with stories that suit their agenda or NOT run stories that don't suit their agenda. In other words, pro-Bush story must have 2 independent sources. Anti-Bush story...run with it as soon as you get it!
This is one of the roots of real (not perceived) media bias.
This "credibility threshold" is variable, thus, the bias comes in the form of unverified stories, not necessarily specific language used in a story (which is separate from this). The credibility threshold is really insidious, because we can't "see" it or "know" it. The language is easy to spot, the stories that don't appear, well, they don't appear. As a result, many people will never see or know about certain stories.
In contrast, ask yourself: how many "independent sources" do you think the NY Times used to run the "George Bush had a DUI 30 years ago" story?
The elite media, in that circumstance, preferred to run the story, even though they couldn't have two independent sources verify the charge.
Now, the story was, of course, true. George Bush did have a DUI, but that wasn't verified until days later...after the story had had the desired effect (i.e., hurt George Bush's 2000 election bid).
In Kerry's case, we don't have the ability to verify the Swift Boat Vets story, because Kerry won't release all of his service records. One would have to think that, were the truth on John Kerry's side, that he would immediately release his records and discredit the Swift Boat Vets' claims once and for all. Alas, Kerry has not yet done that. Curious.
It is also interesting that the papers 1) are not asking for a release of all of Kerry's service record (much like they did with George Bush's NG records) and 2) that many in the media are saying that Kerry "already disclosed his records", which is, simply, not true.
The media bias in this election could be fodder for studying media bias for years to come.
Dozens? My little search showed the following: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,390,000 for kerry +vietnam.
No wonder it's known as the Kansas City (Red) Star.
Thanks. I hadn't heard of that book -- I guess "60 Minutes" didn't do a segment on it.
I just tried ...john kerry swiftboat lies... and came up with 509. I wonder hor far you would have to narrow the search to get to "dozens"?
Or, stated another way, "We wait for the New York Times and Knight Ridder to do our jobs for us. Independent judgement is frowned on here at the Kansas City Star."
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