Quote Originally Posted by reaper239 View Post
which is a problem with the media. objective journalism is technically impossible, since it is impossible to completely remove your world view from a report, but does that then mean that it is acceptable to go to the extreme and make a story that only serves the purpose of creating bias? certainly not. there is a principle that arose, i believe, from the double slit experiment, that observing an event affects the outcome, but observing is not the same as interfereing directly. observation can certainly change the outcome of a heart surgery since the doctor now knows he is being watched and might be more carefull or his nerves make him more prone to mistakes, but that's a far cry from running into the OR and hitting the patient with a sledge hammer. and that's what that story is, taking a sledge hammer to objectivism, and then masquereding it as news. i'll go ahead and say it, the made a claim that was patently false: the man asked a question that everyone assumed was rhetorical and when it became clear that it was not, some in the crowd answered his question. the reporter and editor lied to their viewers.
I highlighted a certain part of your posting. And I feel inclined to agree with you. And yet I am hesitant. Even if media objectives something, they do this on the ground of whatever acceptable or unacceptable moral ground - and if it only is about the cause to question something. Almost any moral or ethical point of view - although being highly subjective and thus anything else but objective in itself - is something the media can perform - even in the way of displaying their news.
The only thing I would not accept is, if a news service blatantly lies or acts against its better judgement by providing false information which can be easily falsified. I guess here things may become very problematic, because it may be very difficult to draw the line between extraordinarily exaggerated sensationalism on the one side and an outright lie on the other side. It is in the interest of any nes-service or media to keep straight enough, though, in order to keep a certain reputation. I think any news-service that would tell real lies and are proven having done this intentionally would cease to exist, because there would be no acceptance at all for them anymore.

As for the last part of your posting: The media certainly would have made a much better job, if they would have stressed the - I guess - fact that the griefing man did provoke certain reactions from the audience - if with or without intention, this, I think, does not matter at all. But the focus of the report was very different. The news-service emphasized that there was no agreement on what the man proposed or wished; and the media services simply "uncovered" that this was the case although children were killed, and thus the media raises the expectancy that things should be as simple as the griefing man demands. In order to give this - actually - fact about the conflict between a moral demand and the disagreement a certain inertia the media edited things in a sensationalist way. I guess this really is a question of interpretation of what the media did here. I don't see a "lie" or something over here (except for mentioning that the griefing man was interrupted; this was not true at all and should be challenged by any means possible); but as I said earlier I am biased about what the media did here, because the overall moral question simply exists, which the media highlighted.

This particluar example of MSNBC is at least as bad as the FOX-News provided in the starting article by YABC. I would like to raise the question, if things like this are plain and simple "normal" in any media in the USA (in Germany there is kind of a variety regarding the usage of neutrality as much as possible on the one extreme and full-blown "infotainment" or sensationalism on the other). And the follow-up question would be: Is there a certain balance in the media about it which may root in the competition of the media?

All the best!
Liam