Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:58:42 -0400
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spy plane crash?

At 04:06 PM 6/22/2005, Mike B. wrote:
>At 03:25 PM 6/22/05 -0400, Elspeth Kovar wrote:
> >At 09:56 AM 6/22/2005, Mike B. wrote:
> >
> >. . .
> >
> >>I'm always skeptical of reporters' abilities to get facts straight.  I've
> >>seen too many stories where they got them wrong to believe otherwise until
> >>there's confirmation.
> >
> >You've said this a number of times before.  I, on the other hand, used to
> >work for NPR.

>. . . Since most of the public is woefully ignorant on the
>subject, it would have been nice if the reporter had chosen to educate,
>rather than mislead.  I did call the station about this, but they didn't
>seem to think it was a big deal, and the same report aired again later that
>day.  Personally, given the tone of reporting on gun legislation on NPR and
>PBS over the years, I figure it was intentional.

Or that communication moved slowly from a local station to whatever
organization it was buying the report from.  Or the organization didn't
have clip of automatic gunfire but did have one of machine guns.  Or were
on a tight enough deadline that they went with the first closest thing.  Or
that with the story done they decided that the people points needed to
answer your objection were better used on upcoming stories.  Etc.

Or that, for some reason, they didn't find you believable.

Meanwhile, some corrections to what you said and/or implied:

Reporters very rarely chose the sounds that go with their reporting -- this
is done by another area.

If it was radio it's likely that it wasn't PBS.  While some of their
programs are heard on the radio they're developed for television; using
background sounds is rare in reporting using a visual media.

Given that it was radio it could have been NPR.  It could also have been
PRI, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, BBC, CBC, American Public
Media, DW-RADIO, Minnesota Public Radio, Lichtenstein Creative Media or
other independents, or a host of others.  (Although I doubt that The
Parent's Journal did a report on guns they may have.)

>They'd also be more believable in general if they didn't claim to be
>commercial-free, yet run sponsor ads before most shows.  They don't run the
>typical 30 second production numbers like on commercial TV, but they do
>read commercials for the major sponsors...including the company name,
>description of the business and their motto or tagline, and sometimes
>contact info, such as a URL.

A lot of people in public radio aren't happy with the increase of
information in the sponsorship information.  On the other hand costs
continue to rise, as they do everywhere, and funding has to come from
somewhere.  Meanwhile, there's an effort in the House to cut CPB funding by
25%.

I notice that you deleted and entirely skipped something counter to your
opinion:

>>. . . I also know someone quite well whom reporters recently contacted
>>for comment on something put out by the feds.  They not only got the
>>quotes right, they got the sense of what was being said and when on to
>>contact other people -- and got those right.
>>
>>Moreover, when something was said with a follow up of "That needs to be
>>said but don't quote me on it" the reporter managed to very neatly get
>>the information into the article without it being connected in any way
>>with the person who said it.

> >Yes, reporters get facts wrong, especially if the story is being done on a
> >tight deadline.  Pity that you've used that to discount all information
> >that comes from the news.
>
>If they are wrong some of the time, they aren't believable any of the
>time...until confirmed.  Unless I already know about whatever the subject
>of the report is, I can't know immediately whether this is one of the
>erroneous or misleading reports or one of the good ones, so I'm skeptical
>of all of them to some extent.

By this logic, and by the test you applied in the examples you gave to
Nicki, what you aren't believable any of the time.

Elspeth