The Good News and The Bad News
Is That No One Believes The News.
Is The War On Marijuana Just A Ploy To Keep Everyone From Being Impeached?
"ERRORS, SENSATIONALISM HURT
PAPERS’ CREDIBILITY"(Marijuananews note: As
I am writing this the US and the UK are bombing Iraq and the Republican leadership is
claiming that Clinton is doing it now because of the pending impeachment vote. Credibility
is the problem. Of course, the Republican leadership also lacks credibility.
See
Editorial Page
Editor of the Atlanta Constitution Says "Barr is the Democrat’s best ally."
It is hardly confined to the impeachment or the Iraqi war. These are the same people
who have accused him of being "soft on drugs" even as marijuana arrests hit all
time records, and they play politics with medical marijuana. But no one has any
credibility. After all, one of the meanings of the word "impeach" is to
"discredit." There are no more unimpeachable sources.
See
As House Prepares
To Impeach Clinton For Lying, It Passes Resolution Saying
That Marijuana Is "Dangerous And Addictive Drug" And Should Not Be Legalized For
Medical Use.
What happens in a democracy when no one believes anyone about anything? Skepticism is
good, but people have to be able to believe someone about something or democracy will not
work.
See
Medical
Marijuana and the Degradation of Science-- The Scientist Should Worry About
Faust Not Frankenstein
As the article below points out, "those who have firsthand knowledge of a news
story are the most critical."
In other words, the more you know about something the worse the media look. Generally,
I have found the news coverage of areas in which I have some knowledge to be filled with
errors. What if what I read about other subjects is equally bad? A frightening
thought, indeed!
There are tens of millions of people who know that they are being lied to about marijuana,
but even they -- we -- have only an inkling of how bad it really is.
I have been studying this issue for decades, and very intensely monitoring the
media’s coverage of it for the last year doing this site, and yet I am constantly
finding it to be even worse than I had imagined.
Moreover, perhaps the biggest part of the problem is what we are not told. There is almost
never any mention of the arrest statistics.
See
1997 Marijuana
Arrests Hit 695,000 -- A New Record;
Percentage Of Marijuana Arrests For Simple Possession Ties 1979 Record
-- Analysis By Richard Cowan
and
This Is The Problem; Even When
The Media Aren’t Lying To Us, They Still Don’t Tell Us the Truth
As newspapers and television find space and time for all manner of trivia, there is
minimal coverage of the medical marijuana issues outside of the areas where it is on the
ballot. Even there it can be misleading.
See
How The
Washington Post Tells Its Readers
About The House of Lords Report On Medical Marijuana -- With Great Subtlety!
And this is on an issue that offers endless "human interest" stories of the
sort devoted to every rumored possible future medical "breakthrough." These are
the staples of journalism, but not when the subject is medical marijuana.
See
Media Give
The Drug Czar Free Ride On Prohibitionist Propaganda Against Medical Marijuana Initiatives
-- 2 Articles
When the Drug Czar made a complete fool of himself lying about the Dutch murder rate,
he got a free ride from the media.
If the "drug" issue is worthy of the coverage lavished on it, why is there a
blackout on the relative success of Dutch drugs policies? If we are really concerned about
children using drugs, then why do we not seriously explore the issue?
See
Drug Czar Lies
Again About the Dutch, Who Respond With The Facts;
Czar’s Aid Says, "forces at work to legalize drugs are trying to bring
these wonderfully allied governments into conflict."
and
Washington Post
Finally Reports On Bizarro’s Dutch Fiasco;
No Mention of Murder Rates – More Fact-Free Journalism
and
The New York
Times Covers Up for the Drug Bizarro And Gives No Hint Of Success of Dutch Policy
and links
The Internet is creating a better informed class of media consumers who know when they
are being lied to – or being kept in the dark about things that should be reported.
The way that this site and the many other excellent anti-prohibitionist sites, such as
www.mapinc.org and www.norml.org have their
greatest impact is by informing the people who then write their editors -- and politicians
– and put them on notice that the American people know that they are being misled.
And misled means both deceived and badly led.
See
Medical Marijuana
and the Internet by Richard Cowan
I hope that you will take advantage of the editors’ momentary awareness and
discomfort generated by this survey to let them know that their coverage of marijuana
prohibition is insulting to the intelligence of any informed person. And --thanks to the
Internet -- if they do not do a better job, there are going to be many more informed
consumers – who will become former consumers of their products.)
See Media Criticism for
many more relevant links,
but especially
Marijuana Prohibition, Media
Criticism, Copyrights and the 8th and 9th Commandments.
and
Hundreds Of
Newspaper Editors Try To Figure Out What To Do About Reader’s Distrust (Hint: Stop
Lying!)
and
Magazine
Publishers of America Agree To Feature Prohibitionist Propaganda In Content
To Get Share of $775 Million Ad Campaign
December 15, 1998
From the Associated Press
ERRORS, SENSATIONALISM HURT PAPERS’ CREDIBILITY
WASHINGTON - Sensationalism, garbled grammar and misquotes are chief reasons for the
decline of credibility in newspapers and a disconnect between today’s reporters and
their audiences, a new report says.
"Americans say they’re tired of having sensational
stories crammed down their throats,"
says a study, released today by the
American Society of Newspaper Editors.
About 80 percent of adults surveyed for the study said newspapers overdramatize the
news to sell papers, and that sensational stories get a lot of coverage because
they’re exciting—not because they’re important.
The public thinks newspapers mishandle "normal" news stories too. Forty-eight percent said they find misleading headlines in their paper
more than once a week.
See
The Oregonian
Puts Prohibitionist Spin On Headline For Straight Story About New Medical Marijuana Laws
In addition, the study says readers see too many misspellings, mislabeled maps and
grammatical mistakes—lowering public trust of the media. It says those who have
firsthand experience with reporters and editors are some of their biggest critics. And it says the public thinks reporters are out of touch with their
readers.
The study, part of the ASNE’s three-year project to find out why the public has
lost confidence in newspapers, is based on a national telephone survey of 3,000 U.S.
adults in April and May, 16 focus groups and a 12-page questionnaire completed by
newspaper journalists. The report was conducted and analyzed by Urban & Associates of
Sharon, Mass.
"I guess the good news is that we recognize that we have problems and we’re
trying to do something about them," says ASNE President Edward Seaton,
editor-in-chief of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury. "It means that we’ve got to
tighten up. We’ve got to cut down on errors, cut down on
anonymous quotes and rein in the pundits."
See
Marijuana and the
Media By Jeff Meyers -- A Reporter's Inside Story
More than three-fourths of those surveyed expressed concern about the credibility of
news stories that use anonymous sources, and 45 percent said the story shouldn’t run
at all if no one will go on the record.
The study’s findings come in a year when the press has had to give a number of mea
culpas: CNN retracted a story presented jointly with Time magazine that alleged the U.S.
military used a nerve agent in pursuing defectors during the Vietnam War. The Cincinnati
Enquirer retracted a story because it was based in part on information stolen from a
company’s telephone message system. At The New Republic magazine and The Boston
Globe, writers made up quotes and people that appeared in stories.
The study also follows three years of high-profile stories that have hogged the front
page: The murder trial of football star O.J. Simpson, the deaths of Princess Diana and
Colorado child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit
against President Clinton and his relationship with former White House intern Monica
Lewinsky.
Sensationalism aside, a newspaper’s credibility often is undermined by little
mistakes. More than one-third of respondents said they see spelling or grammatical
mistakes in their paper more than once a week -- 21 percent said they see them nearly
every day. Twenty-three percent said they find factual errors in the
news stories of their daily paper at least once a week.
While 73 percent of adults have become more skeptical about news accuracy,
those who have firsthand knowledge of a news story are the most critical. Thirty-one
percent said they had been the subject of a news story or had been interviewed by a
reporter. Of that group, 24 percent said they were misquoted and 31 percent found errors
in the story.
Readers welcome corrections, though. Sixty-three percent said they "felt
better" about the quality of the news coverage when they see corrections.
Getting it right, however, is only part of the problem in reaching readers. More than half of those surveyed believe the press is "out-of-touch
with mainstream Americans," the study says. In many ways—educational attainment,
income, interests, circle of friends and working hours—many journalists are in a
different class than the average American, the study says.
"When newspaper readers see feature stories about ways to make an elegant
presentation of artichoke hearts, many study the photograph to find out what, exactly, an
artichoke looks like," the study says. "When adjectives like
‘churchgoing’ or ‘right-wing’ or ‘suburban’ or
‘radical’ appear in print or broadcast news stories, they sense that judgments
are being made by folks not very much like themselves."
