Mediaite is a frequent source here. The news and opinion website actively strives for balance by maintaining a stable of ideologically diverse reporters. It also received a big boost in credibility recently by finally dumping the embarrassing Tommie Christopher, whose left-wing bias was so extreme that it bordered on parody.
However, the site grossly abandoned ethics and accountability this time.
Yesterday I cited a Mediaite story about how Twitter dolts thought they saw a KKK sign in the stands during the World Series, a mistake caused by a bad hybrid of race-obsessed derangement and utter ignorance of the National pastime. What I did not know, because Mediaite was engaged in a cover-up, was that reporter Josh Feldman had filed the original post in which HE accused Cleveland fans of promoting the Klan. As you can see above, the original Mediaite story was not about Twitter morons mistaking the cards representing three strikeouts for Cleveland starter Corey Kluber, but a “scoop” by an ignorant and irresponsible reporter who made that mistake.
After Feldman was quickly schooled on Twitter, Mediaite cleaned up the embarrassing story, removed Feldman’s byline, and turned it into a “Boy are some people stupid!” post. Feldman restricted his apology to Twitter, writing, “Apologies for the fuckup. Need to do more reading up on sportsing things.”
No, need to show some responsibility on reportsing things, Josh. Mediaite’s handling of this botch was unethical, and seriously implicates their trustworthiness. In the revamped post, a note was added saying,
UPDATE- This post has been updated to reflect the fact that it was NOT a KKK sign, it was signifying the number of strikeouts,”
How can anyone trust a website that would do that?
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Pointer and Facts: Daily Caller
Simple answer: You can’t.
Trust has to be earned, and it’s easily lost. It wouldn’t be surprising if we were a nation of skeptics, but that’s not the case. We seem to be a nation of sheep and it’s getting worse.
“We seem to be a nation of sheep and it’s getting worse.” Indeed – even sheep possess and exercise some degree of instinctive skepticism, and their reward is their species’ survival. We are “progressively” a nation of zombies, knee-jerking like Pavlov’s dogs salivated – assimilated in an Invasion of the Country Snatchers. Oh, but we’re smarter than ever, eh?
It really baffles me that someone who is watching a baseball game could be this ignorant. If they didn’t know this, how did they manage to turn the tv on?
What’s even stranger is that when you see that at a nationally televised baseball game, your first assumption is that this largely diminished racist organization mainly from the south managed to gets its moniker prominently displayed in a Northern urban baseball stadium AND get the tv cameras to show it.
Googling baseball game and k’s I suspect would have provided the answer in less than a minute.
And that, in a nutshell, tells us all we need to know about the “new media” and its “reporters.”
As a former domestic counter-terrorism instructor, I feel obliged to point out that there are over 150 Klan groups in the U.S., from New Jersey to California and Florida to Minnesota, so the Midwest is just as likely a place as any for them to rear their ugly heads. What stunned me initially was the utter ignorance of baseball displayed in the matter, and now -even worse- the disgusting cover-up Jack detailed. I’m considering a second career in journalism. I can write circles around most of those I’ve read, and even at my advanced age I have most of my objectivity intact. I would actually follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, plus I know what a “K” (or three) indicates in a baseball game.
Jim: You are commenting here; therefore, you are already working in that second career you are considering. We The People – we who work (I dare say, serve) on a pro bono basis, and not the hired guns who are paid to staff and perform on cue in the most visible and audible broadcasting venues – are now “the journalists,” or at least, the practitioners of journalism. We commenters – at least, those of us who can reign-in our partisanship and keep most of our objectivity intact – are the fulfillment of a new generation’s calling, wherein “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls…” Our “graffiti,” like crime used to be, doesn’t pay, but there is more truth in one word of it than in presidential libraries full of fantastic, failed fluff.
Jim, you couldn’t sit in the same room with these gerbils for even half a day.
This reporter and the editor that green-lighted his story are products of the American Academy. They are in charge of the media and public debate. This is terrifying.
And there are no consequences for them. They just say “my bad” or some other idiotic “trending” aphorism and go right back to being aggressive idiots.