On 31/05/2011 13:42, Francois Labreque wrote:

> A few years ago, one reporter refused to report
> something that he felt was factually incorrect and he was fired. He sued
> for wrongful dismisal and lost. The case was appealed all the way to the
> Supreme Court and they ruled that FOX News was under no obligation to
> tell the truth under the free speech clause of the 1st amendment of the
> the US Constitution.

Now here's a peculiar thing. Many people seem to hold the opinion that 
"the media" publishes news as a service to the public, so that we can 
all live in an informed democracy. They seem to regard the media as the 
sacred guardians of of the Holy Truth, and speak about journalistic 
freedom as being vital to our existence and so forth.

As far as I can tell, this point of view has no basis in reality. I can 
find no evidence of any law requiring them to tell the truth, or 
anything remotely resembling the truth. [This presumably varies by 
country.] The various media companies are [in general] not public 
services, but commercial entities. By definition, their only purpose for 
existing is to generate a profit. They are not /required/ to tell the 
truth and they have no /incentive/ to tell the truth.

And yet... the majority of people seem to assume that the media always 
tells the truth, with only slight exaggerations or inaccuracies. This 
makes no sense to me.

(Think about it: On any given day, what *really* happened in the world 
today is probably pretty boring. Far less attention-grabbing than 
whatever fictional nonsense you would make up off the top of your head. 
So which version of reality are you gonna print, given that you want to 
sell the maximum number of copies?)

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