Saturday, December 29, 2012

Neda Soltani and the failure of modern-day journalism

Just heard a story on NPR about Neda Soltani, an Iranian woman who is now a political exile because the media mistakenly used her Facebook photo to represent a dead political activist with a similar name. The whole story is unbelievable, terribly sad and eerie (we have the same exact DOB). But what is really powerful to me is how shitty and inept the press has become. This woman sent the proper information to several news outlets, including CNN and they completely ignored it. She sent another news agency a different photo of herself to further prove the error and they published it as a new exclusive pic of the dead girl! Listen to the story here:



There are no more journalists. The media has been failing us for quite some time. They don't even deserve the benefit of the doubt. We're going to have to start fact-checking the news ourselves.

When the kids got killed in Newtown, CT, a number of major news outlets reported completely inaccurate information in their rush to get the story out first. What the hell is the point of the news if it's wrong?! I could just ask Pookie down the block for the scoop if I want some "He said, She said."

It's just a damn shame...

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