Face value

[Gunscribe]

For a number of years the following statement has shaped how I consider news from any source.
I offer it here for your enrichment. Think about it the next time you read or see a report on a subject you are not familiar and then ask yourself; is this filled with the same B.S. as the last grabber story I read.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.

 Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

 In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

? Michael Crichton

[OnTheFly]

Exactly what I've been saying when discussions lead in this direction.  One young lady I was speaking to asked "Why is xxxx happening so much lately?".  I relayed a story to her about shark attack reports a few years ago.  Somewhere, a "news" agency reported that shark attacks were up.  The other news agencies couldn't be left behind on such a breaking story, so several other agencies also reported that shark attacks were on the increase.  Even John Stossel made a similar report.  The interesting thing is that Stossel later did a report on all these false reports, and used himself as one of the examples.  Does that make him trustworthy? Meh...honesty is great, but he (along with all the others) should have checked their facts before opening their pie holes and inserting their foot.  Maybe he has learned a lesson...MAYBE.

I should also add that the same rule should be applied to conservative news sources.  I am largely conservative in my views, but some of the far right information is pretty whacked out at times.

Fly

[DenmanShooter]

And sometimes, they just make stuff up...

snip

"On June 2, 1988, CBS aired an hour-long special titled CBS Reports: The Wall Within, which CBS trumpeted as the "rebirth of the TV documentary." It purported to tell the true story of Vietnam through the eyes of six of the men who fought there. And what terrible stories they had to tell. "

snip

"Rather then moved on to suicidal veteran named George Grule, who was stationed on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga off the coast of Vietnam during a secret mission. Grule described the horror of watching a friend walk into the spinning propeller of a plane, which chopped him to pieces and sprayed Grule with his blood. The memory of this trauma left Grule, like Steve, unable to function in normal society."

snip

"The truth was uncovered by B.G. Burkett, a Vietnam veteran and author of Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History (with Glenna Whitley). Burkett discovered that only one of the vets had actually served in combat. Steve Southards, who'd claimed to be a 16-year-old Navy SEAL assassin, had actually served as an equipment repairman stationed far from combat. Later transferred to Subic Bay in the Philippines, Steve spent most of his time in the brig for repeatedly going AWOL.

And George Gruel, who claimed he was traumatized by the sight of his friend being chopped to pieces by a propeller? Navy records reveal that a propeller accident did take place on the Ticonderoga when Gruel was aboard — but that he wasn't around when it happened. During Gruel's tour, the ship had been converted to an antisubmarine warfare carrier which operated, not on "secret mission" along the Vietnam coast, but on training missions off the California coastline. Nevertheless, Burkett notes, Gruel receives $1,952 a month from the Veterans Administration for "psychological trauma" related to an event he only heard about.

Mikal Rice — the anguished vet who claimed to have cradled his dying buddy in his arms — actually spent his tour as a guard with an MP company at Cam Ranh Bay. He never saw combat. Neither did Terry Bradley, who was not the "fighting sergeant" he'd claimed to be. Instead, military records reveal he served as an ammo handler in the 25th Infantry Division and spent nearly a year in the stockade for being AWOL. That's good news for the hundreds of Vietnamese civilians Bradley claimed to have slaughtered. But it doesn't say much for Dan Rather's credibility.

As Burkett notes, the records of all of these vets were easily checkable through Freedom of Information Act requests of their military records — something Rather and his producers simply didn't bother to do. They accepted at face value the lurid tales of atrocities committed in Vietnam and the stories of criminal behavior, drug addiction, and despair at home. "