Faulty News Reports: Who's to blame?

[GAsux]

Ok after reading through all these posts over the last few days ( Sorry I was busy reliving the glory days at a few Bad Religion shows) there seems to be a consensus that the erronious news that's been reported as of late is somehow part of some government propaghanda plot.

I'll readily admit that some aspects of the information that's being released is certainly done with it's affects in mind (i.e. not showing dead Americans, etc). However, it is my opinion that the bad stories that have come out of Iraq over the past several weeks has much more to do with piss poor journalism and sensationalism than it does some kind of contrived government plan.

News outlets are competing so desperately for readers/viewers that they are abandoning journalistic principles in the hopes of breaking the "shocking" stories that sometimes pan out to be not so true. For example, no one from the U.S. government indicated that Jessica Lynch went Rambo on the Iraqis and killed half the country before succombing to gunshot/stab wounds. That was all reported by journalists who got the "story" from Iraqi "witnesses".

Anyway, I don't want to make a long rambling post. All I'm getting at is that I think AT LEAST half of the blame for the information that's been coming out of Iraq falls on the shoulders of poor journalism, not an effort by the government to mislead the people.