More Inaccurate Reporting by Media Makes Public More Skeptical

Now we all know that one news agency’s mishaps should never be used to paint the entire news industry but it does make it a little bit harder to believe what you hear.  This is another reason why news agencies should wait until they get the whole story before opening their mouths.  Some say that so-called news agencies like the Drudge Report are the cause of much of our discourse but truth be told, it’s now affected larger news companies like ABC.

In a rush to make breaking news, journalists are willing to do anything to get the story, even if it causes them to lie.  Someone must be held responsible and take accountability for these actions.  Firing of the journalist is not the solution because they are probably only responding to the pressure from management to get the story.  In the article below written by Alex Seitz-Wald for Salon.com titled “Watchdogs: ABC “in danger of losing a lot of credibility” on Benghazi saga, “you will proof of this. 

“After ABC News’ Jonathan Karl issued a brief statement yesterday — that stopped short of an apology — regarding his hyped-up report of Obama administration emails on Benghazi, which he falsely claimed to have “obtained” and “reviewed,” media watchdogs are not satisfied that Karl has owned up to his mistake but the actual emails (uncovered by CNN’s Jake Tapper) revealed Rhodes did not mention the State Department at all. It was later shown that Karl had not actually obtained or reviewed the emails, but he and the network stood by his reporting and story, anyway.  In his brief statement to CNN, Karl said the story “still entirely stands.” But as Josh Marshall wrote today, “This is simply false. Folks on either side can disagree over how much it changed the story. But you can't have a major part of the story be false and have the story ‘entirely stand.’” Fred Brown, who sits on the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee and teaches at the University of Denver, added that they should have revealed more information about their source in the first place so readers would have been better informed about possible motivations. This doesn't necessarily mean eliminating anonymity entirely, though that’s ideal, but knowing that it came from Republicans would be helpful, he said. “The more information the better.”

So now several members of the public who has come to trust ABC News was misled to believe one thing only to learn later that they probably was wrong in their first interpretation of that story.  How much damage has this done to those who trusted?  Who will step up and do all that they can to reassure their public that this type of reporting will never happen again.  These reporters are dogging the administration about not coming clean sooner or not getting in front of a story, so who will hold reporters as responsible as they try to hold others.  Jesus tells us that one of our major sins is “bearing false witness”.  Are those lying to get the story or increase their ratings guilty of this?