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Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates meeting with Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley at a hospital in Ft. Hood, Texas, Tuesday Nov. 10, 2009. AP Photo/DOD - Cherie Cullen
From the earliest reports, it was obvious that the corporate media dropped the ball on the coverage of the Ft. Hood shootings. Now there is yet more evidence that the media did nothing more than parrot the military's version of what happened.
According to The New York Times on Nov. 7th, police Sgt. Kimberly Munley heroically faced the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and put an end to the rampage by shooting him several times while sustaining several wounds herself.
According to The New York Times on Nov. 12th, a second police officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, is the one who finally subdued the alleged gunman.
While that makes Sgt. Munley no less of a hero if either of the versions of the story are accurate, it does underscore one inescapable fact: In a rush to get a story out, media outlets simply report whatever they are told by the government and/or military without bothering to check the facts. As with WMDs in Iraq, the Jessica Lynch story, the Pat Tillman story and who knows what else, "journalists" in mainstream media did nothing more than repeat as "fact" whatever they were told by "sources" without questioning it.
Investigative journalism, like fact-checking, is also a thing of the past in corporate, mainstream media, which may explain why public perception of media credibility has reached a new low. John Stewart and his team at Comedy Central have shown numerous times that they can fact-check stories more efficiently than Fox, CNN, etc. Independent investigative journalists not employed by corporate media have done a much better job of bringing the facts to their readers, despite limited financial resources.
In an email to Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher, Times executive editor Bill Keller wrote: "What we and other news organizations (at least the ones I saw) had to go on in the early days was the official account put out by the post commander and the director of emergency services. They said (accurately) that Munley rushed to the scene and that she was shot. They claimed (inaccurately, we now know) that she fired the shot or shots that brought Hasan down. We reported what they said, attributed to them."
That puts it very succinctly. In a rush to get the scoop, reporters become stenographers and both fact-checking and investigative journalism is left to independent media and the bloggers. The problem is that real questions get put on the shelf while corporate media rushes to the next breaking story, and the truth can get lost in the clutter and sound bytes that have become the essence of mainstream media.
What else will turn out "inaccurate" regarding the claims from the military about the Fort Hood incident, the "Allahu Akbar" shouts, details of Hasan's past, the number of shooters? Will our media continue to drop the ball?
Comments
Ummm... sorry, but covering a breaking event is not and NEVER IS 'investigative journalism' - it's spot news at its least accurate.
What you are seeing NOW approaches investigative journalism, as reporters peel back the layers trying to find the truth.
And I will point out that it is not the 'independent media and bloggers' (who simply don't have the time, money and other resources) who are digging it out - it's the much maligned MSM like the Washington Post, NY Times, NPR and the networks who are doing the spade work.
I did an 18-month military exchange tour with one of the largest newspaper companies back in the mid-1990s - and got a first-hand look at how difficult and expensive (money and time) it is to do real investigative reporting.
Media companies make mistakes (Judith Miller comes to mind) but they or their competitors also are usually the ones who correct it.
Jake, I think this article makes a distinction between simple "fact-checking" with breaking stories and investigative journalism after-the-fact. Simple fact-checking would have prevented the above inaccuracy. I also agree that mainstream media does a poor job with investigative journalism. For real investigative journalism one does need to go to the blogs. See: Brad Friedman, Robert Parry, Greg Palast, Gleen Greenwald for real journalism. As for Judith Miller (aka "Steno Jude") - she knew she was just a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and I would call her reporting on WMDs in Iraq propaganda, bordering on outright lies.
This is a good article by Greg Patin. The new blog-news has been acting to give a much needed balance to Mainstream Media "reporting". More and more people are becoming aware that the big Corporate News agencies give very biased accounts of almost every story. The Truth lies somewhere between their reports and the various new outlets that have emerged. Independent reporting such as this story helps shine light into the "process" the MSM uses to "report and inform".
Nevertheless there are still people who will believe anything that is "Official". And will strive to have others who are looking to alternative news sources, see the error of their ways and return to the good ole' days of Walter Cronkite and his ilk.
The most important part of this article is: <em>"...media outlets simply report whatever they are told by the government and/or military without bothering to check the facts. As with WMDs in Iraq, the Jessica Lynch story, the Pat Tillman story and who knows what else, "journalists" in mainstream media did nothing more than repeat as "fact" whatever they were told by "sources" without questioning it."</em>
Even in the two-bit journalism course I took, if I had reported unskeptically what an 'official' source said my teacher would have given me a bad grade; if I had done it professionally, I would at least have received a reprimand. But that was 30-40 years ago. Today there is no penalty for repeating govt. handouts, even if they're later proved wrong. Should you do some real journalism that discomfits the comfortable, though, you'll likely end up fired and, worse, blacklisted as a troublemaker. There are still some good reporters out there, but they are few and far between.
Frankly, the ignorance and bile displayed on this page over a nothing event makes me ashamed you wingnuts are fellow Americans, especially the boob who can't find the CAPS LOCK key on his keyboard.
Does it ever occur to you that you are narrow-minded drones who are wasting your anger on ludicrous symbolism while the Corporate GOP uses you for their own ends? What a bunch of suckers.
You probably don't believe in Darwin, but one of the central tenets of his theory of evolution has been mangled (surprise) by the right-wing -- it isn't the strong that survive, but the most adaptable, as the extinction of the dinosaurs proved.
Of course, you righties aren't even strong -- in the Home of the Brave you cower in fear from criminals who hide in caves -- you have a better chance of dying from a fall down the stairs than you do in a terrorist attack, yet you are ready to junk the Constitution to fight terrorism. What a pack of insipid, whiny cowards you are. You should be ashamed.
This comment somehow ended up on the wrong page.
Jake.........who cares if it is expensive and time consuming! The American people deserve the truth. Instead of saying something is fact, they could always say, "It has been reported..." I think what Greg was trying to say is this kind of reporting..........sucks! If we allow this...what other facts are the media going to misconstrue? It is sickening!
Jamie, then you need to pay for it. Real investigative reporting is almost always done by print journalists; broadcast usually follows, not leads.
And if you haven't noticed, newspapers are some of the worst victims of the economic collapse - reduced advertising = reduced revenues = smaller papers = staff cuts --> fewer people, time or money for real investigations.
Spot news - like the first 24 hours after the Ft. Hood shooting - is always full of holes and heavy on official statements because that's all you can get at the time.
But if you plug Hasan into Google News NOW, you'll find a wealth of investigative work being done - some of it accurate, some of it questionable. NY Times, WaPost, and Dallas Morning News all have done good work; on the broadcast side, NPR and ABC's team have done some good stuff.
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