clangador wrote:

Busman wrote:Every single personal interaction I've had with the news, when I knew the true facts of something on the news, has shown that they do this sort of thing all the time. Not 100% of the time, but they choose shock/entertainment over facts time and time again.

That is my experience as well. I don't trust the news as the whole truth anymore.

I'll third this.

Everytime something I've been involved with, or something a neighbor/friends was involved with, has made it to the local news, it was a total FUBAR.  I can only imagine the national news takes the same approach. Heck, look what they did to D&D and EGG back in the 80's on 60 Minutes so they could tell the story they wanted.

Case in point, a friend of mine was shot in the back with a shotgun while doing something stupid.  He was drunk in a strange neighborhood, wandered away from a party, fell asleep in some bushes, awoke and mistook another house a block away for the house he was partying at. He began banging on the front door telling those inside to let him in.  It didn't help that it was after midnight, and that the homeowner had been robbed in the past by kids who broke into his garage.   When the door opened and instead of his buddies, there was an angry pld black man with a shotgun, he realized his mistake and turned around and took off running. The homeowner let him have a load of buckshot in his rear and back (lucky it wasn't a heavier load or my friend would be dead) and called the police.  My friend was picked up later wandering the street, bleeding and still a bit drunk, and spent the night in the drunk tank (and in the hospital getting shot pried out of his ass, legs and back).  In the end he wasn't charged with anything but public intoxication (everyone from the police to the homeowner believed his story, and figured he'd paid for his stupidity enough).

The next day, the story ran on the local news, along the lines of "Homeowner fights off home invasion!".  The guy was made out to be a hero for fighting off some punk kid with his shotgun, I don't think the story ever mentioned my weaponless friend was hit in the ass while running away. With what I am sure was a 15 minute interview with the homeowner cut down to a 2 second sound bite.  We still laugh about that when we get together.

Another time a friend of mine that was doing some kind of ride your bike across Texas for a charity was interviewed by a local station. They somehow managed to get his name, the mileage he was riding, and the name of the charity wrong, all in one 15 second clip. Astounding!

In 1986 my friends and I went to Spring Break in South Padre Island.  My parents at the time had  house there and about a dozen of us crashed there. The second day there, most of my friends went across the border to Matamoras, and two got arrested for smoking a joint outside a bar (stupid, stupid, stupid).  The next couple of days their parents worked with an attorney and counsel to get them released (which they eventually secured with a couple of 10k bribes).  The local newspaper reportage was incredibly bad.  They got their names, sex, charges, everything wrong, even had them as a trio instead of just two of them (with some poor saps name being used for the non-existent third guy).  Being intimate with the situation it was amazing how little in the reports was actually true....the one good result being it would be impossible to look back and discover this ever happened and match it up to the two people I knew since everything that was in the newspaper that week was completely inaccurate.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:Nobody worries about it too much when white guys kill each other:


Mike B.

Sadly the same can be said for nearly all intra-racial homicides. The most terrible part is this is especially true for African-Americans, at least in major metropolitan areas. In Arizona Latino on Latino murders hardly even make the news.

Meh, I need to stop reading this stuff, it makes me sad.  

Zach

The forbidden topic that is not being touched on...

Tragic events like this are made possible by the gun culture of the United States that permits private citizens to carry firearms openly and/or concealed.
It permits people with strong "inner fantasy lives" to pretend they are law enforcement officers or soldiers or some kind of superhero.

Nogrod wrote:NBC to do an internal investigation regarding editing of 911 call

washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/po ... _blog.html

NBC played the conversation on the "Today Show" as: "This guy looks like he's up to no good.  He looks black."

The unabridged version is:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.

I hate the news media and they owe this guy, and their viewers, an apology.

Zach

Or with a good lawyer a great lawsuit...?

Yikes, looks like Dragonsfoot had the Big Crash today.  Doesn't look good. Hope they get it back up without too much loss of data.

Mike B.

jasonw1239 wrote:The forbidden topic that is not being touched on...

Tragic events like this are made possible by the gun culture of the United States that permits private citizens to carry firearms openly and/or concealed.
It permits people with strong "inner fantasy lives" to pretend they are law enforcement officers or soldiers or some kind of superhero.

Actually, this kind of crime is quite rare....and it isn't at all clear that this is what happened in the Zimmerman/Martin case.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:http://www.videobash.com/video_show/jus ... lls-251317

It's good to get a new perspective once in a while.  It puts things in context....makes sense of life.

If people are so upset that the baseball season extends into November now, why on Earth is "Opening Day" now April 6th?

Someday after the gargoyle has passed away, Bud Selig's reign as Baseball's commissioner will be remembered as 20+ years of stupidity.

Mike B.

Gnat the Beggar wrote:http://www.videobash.com/video_show/jus ... lls-251317

Nothing like this could brighten my day better. Thank you.