I happened to stumble upon Rachel Maddow’s show a couple of days ago and was greeted by a proclamation of a breaking news story, one that she and MSNBC alone were privy to. The lead in promised that her “scoop” was an amazing bit of journalism, and indeed it appeared to be.
It was, as it turned out, a political poll that showed that a significant number of people disagreed with President Trump about something or other. The problem with this poll was that it failed to show the number of people questioned or their demographics, which to my mind at least nullified this "proprietary-only-we-have-it“ would be scoop.
This kind of thing, much like the unattributed stories so prevalent in the mainstream press these days simply plays on the fears of the public, without providing any source material to backup the assertions. This is the crux of what we call "Fake News" and is a gross disservice to all who consume these purported news stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment