I heard this on NPR today and it made me think.
There are myriads of talk shows and 24-hour cable news programs. And most of them go through a lot of information relatively quickly, so mistakes are inevitable. But there is only one program that deliberately goes out of its way at the end of every program to make sure everything was correct, and if anything was incorrect, will make sure to tell you what was incorrect and what the actual correct information is. Can you guess the show?
PTI. That's right, Pardon the Interruption is the only show that corrects any factual mistakes at the end of the show.
I think it says a lot of negative things about the culture, and also the quality, of the American Media that the industry leader in fact-checking is a sports program.
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3 comments:
I would love for more shows to correct themselves on their factual mistakes.
I think it's hard for news programs to correct themselves within their half-hour period. A lot of their mistakes cannot be pointed out until later, don't you think?
Kind of like a newspaper that runs a story, but gets it facts wrong. They have a section dedicated to its errors and omissions, but it's always a day or two after the original paper.
Would you like to see that with shows, even if it's a day or two later?
Ideally, I would like to see an error free show. But off the top of my head I can think of several interviews with presidential candidates who have misquoted and misrepresented, (intentional or not)their rival candidates. What I would like is for someone to call out a candidate if he says something that is incorrect.
Not that I watch the presidential debates anyway, but I would much more inclined to watch them if the moderator would call bullshit when it's blatently obvious.
I will be the first to admit that a problem arises when you try to divide up the line between facts and opinions. For example, a show like the O'Reilly factor. One man's end the war is another man's surrender to terror.
But I think we can all agree that there is a lot of bullshit on cable news, and that there doesn't have to be as much.
Totally agree.
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