By now you’ve heard there’s been another terrorist strike in London today. The bad guy drove his car onto the sidewalk on Westminster Bridge, in sight of the Houses of Parliament, mowing people down, killing some and badly injuring many. Guess who’s M.O. that is.
Then he got out of the car and stabbed a police officer–whereupon they shot him.
I’m not here to function as a reporter of the incident; besides which, the details are still coming in and we haven’t got the whole story yet. But one thing I did read caught my eye.
To set the scene: this bad guy, having just wreaked havoc on the bridge, gets out of his car and, in front of a whole crowd of witnesses, plus TV cameras, he stabs a police officer. At which point, finally, he gets shot.
And the nooze report puts it like so: “a man, believed to be the suspect…”
What? You mean he isn’t? Like maybe he’s just some innocent passerby that the police shot down because they didn’t have anything else to do at the moment?
I’m thinking maybe I ought to be thankful that the noozies didn’t label the killer “a Trump supporter.”
As a vehicle for transmitting accurate, reliable information, the nooze media have become increasingly inadequate. They’re either too careful when there’s surely no reason to be, or else totally reckless: it all depends on what political spin they want to put on the story.
If you can’t believe the “news,” you might as well not have any.
Unfortunately, the propaganda machine has completely overtaken any semblance of real news. Rachael Maddow’s ‘expose’ of the Trump tax return is but one more absurd example. The Main Stream (Lame Stream) Media is bought and paid for – and not by us.
It is amazing. You would think they would be ashamed of themselves for making such a complete travesty of the facts. I heard one of them say, “it is being considered that this could be a terrrorist attack” Really? Who would ever have considered that? They turn my stomach. I have to leave the room when the babblers are talking.
Reporting has become so neutered by PC nonsense as to be less than worthless. Occasionally, Reuters manages to get some facts through, but even they are using quotes around the word terrorist.
P.S. If the terrorists succeed in intimidating you, they have won.
Jeez.. you folks are so self-consumed with conspiracy theories that even when the press reports on an event very objectively.. and not automatically reaching a conclusion on who was the perpetrator, you still find fault??
I see no conspiracy whatsoever. The news media is intimidated and afraid to call a terrorist attack for what it is. The local police are calling it a “marauding terrorist attack” and even Reuters refuses to use that word without quotes. I call fear out when I see it and so far, terrorism has been quite effective in turning the news media into quivering cowards.
Tell me, where is my conspiracy theory?
Your last line… “If you can’t believe the “news,” you might as well not have any.” By “qualifying” the responsibility of any antagonists or even in describing the event itself… how did that in any way suggest any question in the believe-ability in the reporting of the event?
Also, Linda Sorci above says it’s all propaganda by the “Lame Stream media”… Erlene suggests a “travesty of facts”…
PC or not, how does this reporting shake your foundations in believing the press?
Unvarnished truth would be a welcome change, Doug 🙂 Snippets, half-truths and misleading information just don’t qualify as ‘news’.
Then where do you get your… “perfect”.. news? Seems to me exercising and applying greater “media literacy” is a way to filter input rather than dismissing it all.
As a former newspaper reporter and editor, I can tell you that there was a time when we in that profession did try to get the story right, insofar as humanly possible. We considered accuracy a virtue. But of course I’m talking about journalism at a level far less exalted than that occupied by the Big Media.
Think of Ben Bradlee hanging out on the Kennedy yacht, in between editing columns at The Washington Post; or Walter Duranty of the New York Times, serving up fairy tales of the workers’ paradise presided over by Josef Stalin. Fo-nee!
. . . and 69 years in this earthly body has given me more than enough time to become skeptical if not altogether cynical. Why do you suppose they call it programming?
We are talking about alleged journalists who slavishly use wrong-gender pronouns–calling some guy who says he’s a woman “she” or “her.” How honest is that? I guess if you think plain and simple truth doesn’t matter anymore, just say what people want you to say, well, then I suppose you’d be all right with that.
And saying a man is “believed to be the suspect”–believed!–when he stabbed the police officer right before the eyes of a whole crowd of people, plus TV cameras–that’s just garbage.