Witch hunt alert? Time will tell.

[Ragnar]

Speculation is fine with you and me. IT IS NOT FINE WITH THE MEDIA OR OFFICIALS.

Essentially, news needs to stop reporting shit they know nothing about because it causes real, tangible harm. These people in the photos are likely to go through some serious problems because of this or could even have been harmed.

Look at what happened to sandy hook. The national dialog was sent back and tainted with continual incorrect bullshit. There are still people that do not know half of what they believe is false because the media kept reporting falsehoods and things they knew nothing about.

I mostly agree. Not much can be done about the media (free press) other than holding them to account with the facts and making sure bad actors get punished with derision, mocking and maybe best of all lost viewership. (maybe boycotts if that's your thing)

The authorities better damn well get it right and if not we have the constitutional means to get them thrown out of office. (elected authorities anyway, bureaucrats are tougher but they all have elected bosses at some point)

Well, yes a boycott is the way to go as this is obviously not a legal matter in that you cannot restrict the press. Boycott really misses it though because that implies some sort of conscious organization. People just need to wake up and stop feeding the giants. Personally, I have stopped patronizing virtually all news sources. They are not worth the time. I can get all my news from a ton of varied sources right here on the internet with very little contact with the alphabet soup and their entertainment shows (as they no longer qualify as actual news). AP reports can be garnered from other places and most real data can be mined from source material rather than the cut up versions that the media gives you anyway. Want to know about budgets, expenditures and changing receipts? The news will only feed you lies about that. Go to the CBO and the Whitehouse historical tables. Want to know about gun control, go to the FBI crime statistics. New laws? They are there online. There is truth in source material and lies in material where you let others do your thinking.

I would hope that enough people see the light and force the news agencies to actually go back to reporting but I fear that we are only going to wrong direction. People don’t really want real information, that makes them think. All they want is an affirmation of their core beliefs and some empty entertainment.

Always a good idea going the multiple sources route and the internet is truly built with exactly that in mind. Old PoliSci Prof. always shared a favorite quote of his, "Stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from many sources is scholarship".

As for the rest I agree there too but would hasten to add that this is clearly a big problem but it's not a particularly new problem. Back in the nineteenth century any decent sized town had multiple partisan newspapers fighting for business, news leads, circulation and often eachother. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "If you don't read the paper you're uninformed. If you do read the paper you're misinformed.".

Maybe it was just always is way.

 

[CaféAuLait]

It took years to find the unabomber, and not before one of his attacks was carried out at Vanderbilt. It took hours to accuse an innocent man in Atlanta. Free press? Sure. Now, what about RESPONSIBLE press? This shit is exactly why Obama doesn't need to be allowed to use drone attacks on US soil without due process of law. The press would have this country back to the middle ages in a heartbeat!

I just don't think it is the presses fault here. I know I am sounding like I am beating a dead horse but if the Feds had looked into the photos they did release of the young boys in the track suits I believe they should have been able to figure out who they were in a heartbeat given Reddit users did in a matter of hours. IMO they should not have passed their photos around, they should have done a little more investigating first.

 

[whitehall]

As usual the radical bigoted left underestimates the intelligence of the people in the greatest Country in the world. The left wing media tried to pin the murder of a Texas District Attorney on some vague "white supremacist" gang and they were dead wrong. They don't have to point fingers this time but it would be nice if they conceded that the "jihad" consists of Mid-East radicals who killed about 3,000 innocent Americans going on 13 years ago.

 

[Foxfyre]

As of 6 p.m. EDT today, all responsible media organizations are reporting that the FBI released the video to the media with encouragement to get it out there. They are asking anybody who might know who the two indiividuals are to not approach them but to report to the police and/or FBI immediately. The theory is that there is ample reason to believe these are persons of interest and with the videos spreading like wildfire, it is likely the two individuals will see themselves soon. if innocent they will come forward immediately and will be cleared.

The more time that goes by, and they do not report in, the greater the interest in them will be.

But it was not the media who targeted these guys. It was the FBI.

FBI Releases Photos and Video Of Suspected Boston Marathon Bombers | PBS NewsHour

 

[AmyNation]

If these two are "innocent" you think they would have reported in somewhere.

They did. They saw their pic in the post and were calling everyone and anyone to declare their innocence.

 

[AmyNation]

As of 6 p.m. EDT today, all responsible media organizations are reporting that the FBI released the video to the media with encouragement to get it out there. They are asking anybody who might know who the two indiividuals are to not approach them but to report to the police and/or FBI immediately. The theory is that there is ample reason to believe these are persons of interest and with the videos spreading like wildfire, it is likely the two individuals will see themselves soon. if innocent they will come forward immediately and will be cleared.

The more time that goes by, and they do not report in, the greater the interest in them will be.

But it was not the media who targeted these guys. It was the FBI.

FBI Releases Photos and Video Of Suspected Boston Marathon Bombers | PBS NewsHour

This thread is about the two Mediterranean kids whose picture was in the post. Not the pics released by the FBI.

 

[Foxfyre]

As of 6 p.m. EDT today, all responsible media organizations are reporting that the FBI released the video to the media with encouragement to get it out there. They are asking anybody who might know who the two indiividuals are to not approach them but to report to the police and/or FBI immediately. The theory is that there is ample reason to believe these are persons of interest and with the videos spreading like wildfire, it is likely the two individuals will see themselves soon. if innocent they will come forward immediately and will be cleared.

The more time that goes by, and they do not report in, the greater the interest in them will be.

But it was not the media who targeted these guys. It was the FBI.

FBI Releases Photos and Video Of Suspected Boston Marathon Bombers | PBS NewsHour

This thread is about the two Mediterranean kids whose picture was in the post. Not the pics released by the FBI.

Ah okay. I didn't look closely enough and apologize for that.

However, I would go to the Post itself for updates as that initial two guys were in e-mails the police were circulating. And the Post itself prominently reported that they had been cleared. Should the police and/or media be careful with stuff like this? Of course they should. But if these HAD been the two guys, there would be much less criticism of them being targeted as persons of interest yes?


Two men probed in Boston Marathon bombings cleared by investigators - NYPOST.com

 

[FA_Q2]

Always a good idea going the multiple sources route and the internet is truly built with exactly that in mind. Old PoliSci Prof. always shared a favorite quote of his, "Stealing from one source is plagiarism. Stealing from many sources is scholarship".

As for the rest I agree there too but would hasten to add that this is clearly a big problem but it's not a particularly new problem. Back in the nineteenth century any decent sized town had multiple partisan newspapers fighting for business, news leads, circulation and often eachother. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "If you don't read the paper you're uninformed. If you do read the paper you're misinformed.".

Maybe it was just always is way.

You might be right. I tend to hate the argument that things are worse today than some other random time that you were not around for. We here that all the time, particularly recently where people say we are worse than ever before, the recession is worse than ever before, we have never had xyz so bad. The world is going to collapse around us.

Every generation seems to think that they have it worse than the last and it is rarely true. I think that we have lost our way and that some of the problems we face seem insurmountable but I just can’t demand that things are worse now than a time that I can only read about. You never know.

It makes sense to me that the press has always been somewhat hasty. I think in recent times it has gotten worse just because major networks have gotten better at delivering a flashy product. If you look at the design of fox you can see what I mean. They truly have begun to understand that they really are entertainment above all else. Hopefully, people will wizen up though. As much as I hate the networks because if their shoddy reporting and the half-truth that they keep putting out there as the whole story they play a key role. They bring in the kind of capitol that journalism must have to survive. Getting a complete and correct story is not cheap by any means and the shrinking world is not improving that situation. Without that money, journalists would be nigh extinct but if we keep going the way we are, good journalism is going to go extinct anyway…