I was listening to BBC World Service this afternoon, when the reader announced the next story by referencing the return of infectious diseases b because of the"false" (his word) idea that vaccines are dangerous. "That is not true, he insisted, and mentioned one other anti-vaxx idea, again stating flatly it was a lie.This is a complete fabrication but you wouldn’t know it from reading this ABC News tweet, which spreads Trump’s lie uncritically https://t.co/i6037eDxTg— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 26, 2019
And I marvelled that I'd never heard a U.S. reporter speak so plainly or clearly about something so blatantly false. And I wondered if the American experiment would fail, if they started doing so.
Doesn't seem to have hurt the Brits.
I think the problem with the typical American burial of the truth under that kind of stuff is a. a campaign by right wingers in the 70 till today to lie that the center-right American media were lefties, so intimidating them like a cowardly grammar school principal who is convinced hell get canned for generating a law suit by "parents", b. it, like everything else in American media is driven by marketing and finances. Reporting fact is more expensive than that crouch of "fairness" and giving all opinions "their fair hearing" which never does add up to that since it's the liars who they always have on.
ReplyDelete"Free speech" and other such notions took a seriously wrong turn as Hollywood took over the American mind. Of course "free speech" is profitable for media companies who can then sell sensation, sex and lies which sell.