Growing up, I trusted the media to do thier jobs and
give me the unvarnished truth. I want to believe that
they did and I was not just a bit to naive. I want to
believe they were more about the truth and collecting
multiple sources that confirmed what they were handing
to the public. I want to believe they were giving me
information without any bias, not pushing a viewpoint,
but just handing me the information so I could decide.
The informed mind could always make better decisions
and we depended on them to keep us informed.
Now, I’m sad to say, I have difficulty trusting a vast
majority of what the media is shoveling these days. I’m
not saying there are not still some very good ones out
there that still work within the bounds of honesty, ethics,
integrity, and diligence. The problem is that breed of
journalist seem to be on the endangered species list.
In the digital age, truth has almost been sacrificed up
to the need to first. Now with everything tracked and your
success based on how many people you can get to “click”
on your site or article, first is the only bait they have
to attract the fish they require to keep those numbers up.
Get it out there, get it online, get it generating viewership.
If it turns out we are wrong, we will delete it, or print
a retraction, but we will still have created a ton of “hits”
and thats the real goal. Got to generate those hits for the
advertising department to be able to generate our income!
This type of thing makes me sick and I’m disgusted with how
very often this seems to happen. Once and while you can
chalk something up to a mistake, but its becoming to common
an occurance for that any more. I’ll not even get into the
putrid and vile ways biased propaganda has crept into the
media, that is another issue all by itself for another time
and another place.
I’m just so very thankful for the people we have here at
highlands that in my opinion still seem to follow the “old
school” mentality when it comes to reporting. Accurate, honest,
unbiased, and unvarnished seems to come before being first
with these guys. What journalist should be.
BTW, did anyone notice even in the retraction of the Barford
story, the news agency didn’t say it made a mistake. It put
all the blame on the police department. Completely bypassing
that its their own job to make sure what they report is accurate.
Its not up to the police to fact check the NWA website articles.
Here is the quote from thier retraction:
“The Fayetteville Police Department reported Jaylen Barford was
cited for shoplifting over the weekend at a Walmart Neighborhood
Market.”
“Police then informed KNWA/KFTA it wasn’t Barford cited, but a
girl he was with at the time.”
No apology, no admission of them making a mistake, nothing.
How pathetic!