Who is writing our news stories

[spirits]

I recently read a story in my daily city paper about Hostess filing for bankruptcy. One of the precipitating factors was their inability to pay future retirement obligations.
I do not want to run foul of our policy for political discussion but in one version of the story I just read on line, the 2 reporters were of obvious East Asian decent from India and the article was edited by 2 other reporters from United States.
Have we sunk so low as to outsource our news stories, why is this happening and is the final interpretation of the news slanted beforehand?
I am very upset that our independent news reporting appears to be for sale to the lowest bidder. I will be aware to pay attention to the news source even more in the future

 

[AwayWeGo]

You Typed A Mouthful.

I will be aware to pay attention to the news source even more in the future

Journalism as it has long been known & respected is pretty much finished.

About all that's left is phony-baloney Jerna-Lizzum.

So it goes.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[Ridewithme38]

There are still some VERY quality news people out there...the problem is more what society has decided they WANT to pay attention to, when the 'bias' news and the 'shock' news have the highest circulation and viewership numbers....Even the best of the best need to find a way to keep their jobs

When looking for TRUE media you have to start looking at the upper levels of media, Financial news and media is a good first step, i'm a huge fan of Bloomberg News and still read the wall street journal, they seem to be very middle of the road and leave most if not all opinion out of their pieces

 

[dougp26364]

Since the advent of 24/7 news channels and all the ways media can be distributed, I've found the news to be more of a reality show with more sensationalism than actual news reporting. The majority of the news has been op/ed for such a long time it's almost not worth reading or listening too. Most of the news reporting I take with a grain of salt. Other than getting the big picture, one has to have their own news filter to wade through the garbage to attempt to figure out what's really happening.

 

[pgnewarkboy]

With a few internet exceptions big corporations own the news media and control what they report and how they report it.

SOPA is one of the most controversial laws in a decade. Many say it could effectively destroy the internet as we now enjoy it. I don't know who is correct on this issue but it is clearly controversial and significant legislation. The major companies that own the major media outlets are on record supporting the legislation. Consequently the networks have spent zero time covering the controversy. This lack of coverage was reported by a media watchdog group-

 

[ScoopKona]

The major companies that own the major media outlets are on record supporting the legislation. Consequently the networks have spent zero time covering the controversy. This lack of coverage was reported by a media watchdog group-

And if you try to spread the word about things like this on internet fora, the thread gets locked.


But seriously, it takes a LOT of effort to find out what's going on. Newspapers are now nothing more than mouthpieces for the status quo.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

There has never been more freedom of the press than in our current world.

It used to be that unless you owned a printing press and the infrastructure to distribute your printed material, you were nothing more than a voice on a street corner. Under that system if you controlled the printing presses you controlled speech. That's why dictatorships the world over regarded printing presses as instruments of sedition and controlled closely who could own them and operate them.

With the internet anyone can publish. You don't need to be vetted by some news corporation, or have your material reworked or rewritten. You can say what you want and put it out there for people to read. It's a bit like going back to the days when most cities had 10 or more newspapers, all vying for attention, only even better.

But then the newspapers were all consolidated under the control of a handful of people. That, of course, was the so-called "golden age of journalism", where there was a handful of people who got to decide what was news and what was not news. It was a golden age because they had the gold and they made the rules.

 

[K&PFitz]

"I do not want to run foul of our policy for political discussion but in one version of the story I just read on line, the 2 reporters were of obvious East Asian decent from India and the article was edited by 2 other reporters from United States."

Koreans from India? Japanese from India? India is South Asia.

When you read something online, especially if you're just clicking on links on the news aggregation sites, you might end up on any site. Often they redirect to British papers, or overseas versions of US papers. Don't be surprised to find international by-lines on the net.

 

[spirits]

Here is original article

Thanks for the correction of Asian decent
Here is the original article
Hostess returns to bankruptcy over pensions

(It is not showing hyperlinked as I type. Hope it comes through in the post)

 

[geekette]

The World Wide Web is indeed, surprise, World Wide. I can find links to current events in other countries and could put them on my website or distill the info and give credit to the source. so don't be surprised that "our" news shows up elsewhere. so does "theirs".

Objective reporting has been gone for a very long time. There are none that I refer to as journalists, they are all reporters, often reporting on what they find elsewhere.

locally they tell us straight up that they ripped it off : "with help from our news-gathering partners ..."

What bugs me most is the loss of objectivity. I do not like a talking head steering me into how the story *should* make me feel. But, media is not unbiased.

 

[Conan]

The story cited by the OP was syndicated by Reuters. Hostess is headquartered in Irving, Texas. You don't need a reporter in Texas to write the story, so why not India?

More than two years ago, Reuters, the financial news service, opened a new center in Bangalore. The 340 employees, including an editorial team of 13 local journalists, was deployed to write about corporate earnings and broker research on U.S. companies. Since then, the Reuters staff at the center has grown to about 1,600, with 100 journalists working on U.S. stories.
....
[G]uild reporters in New York cannot match the price differential in Bangalore, where wages and rents are less than one-fifth those of Western capitals. In Amhmedabad, 300 miles, or 480 kilometers, north of Mumbai, Hi-Tech Export offers a discounted rate for 40 hours of editing services starting at $359
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/business/worldbusiness/19iht-outsource.3594625.html?pagewanted=all

Bangalore Photo Journal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/africa_bangalore/html/1.stm

Kavyanjali Kaushik

Correspondent at Thomson Reuters
Location Bengaluru Area, India Industry Media Production Overview

Current

• Business Correspondent at Thomson Reuters

Past

• • Trainee Producer at Headlines Today
  • Intern at The Hindu
  • Intern at Hindustan Times
• • Intern at Indo Asian News Service
  • Intern at NDTV 24X7

Education

• National Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology, New Delhi
• University of Westminster

Websites

• Portfolio http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/kavyanjalik/&urlhash=mchC

Public Profile http://in.linkedin.com/in/kavyanjalik

 

[vacationhopeful]

I totally dislike the "FLUFF" pieces on the major US TV news stations - I don't give a rat's a** as to what "KIM & family" is doing, sleeping, wearing or marrying. Or the other assorted 'glamour' people.

And an hour of news has almost no hard news - just 55+ minutes of fluff and teleprompter readers with good hair, skin and teeth.

 

[pjrose]

I totally dislike the "FLUFF" pieces on the major US TV news stations - I don't give a rat's a** as to what "KIM & family" is doing, sleeping, wearing or marrying. Or the other assorted 'glamour' people.

And an hour of news has almost no hard news - just 55+ minutes of fluff and teleprompter readers with good hair, skin and teeth.

With you on that! Our society has created celebrities who are famous for nothing other than being famous

Don't leave out the 25 minutes of commercials which are frequently loud screaming car commercials .

I suppose as to the OP's question and Conan's post about outsourcing of journalism, well, I guess you can do the phone calls and emails and research and writing from just about anywhere, though it does preclude the possible additional depth of an in-person interview, and it also limits the ability to comprehend and convey local "flavor" (for lack of a better term) that could add perspective to articles.

 

[spirits]

My imagination run riot

I am picturing a hard boiled newspaper editor (think back to those movies from the 40's) bossing all the underlings around. " Bobby, go write a story on how cheese is good for you" (note: referring to a post I just put up today) "Gary, write a story of how pipelines coming through our farmland is good for the economy" "Susan, go research all those timeshare stories and put in a story of how fractional ownership, bought retail, is a godsend to cash strapped retiring baby boomers" "Oh yah....add how they can profit from all the money they can make from renting those overpriced...ooops valuable assets"
Thought balloon...."Now have I forgotten any other "contributors" to my retirement portfolio and future board of directors possibilities?"
It makes me want to cry.

 

[Ridewithme38]

I am picturing a hard boiled newspaper editor (think back to those movies from the 40's) bossing all the underlings around. " Bobby, go write a story on how cheese is good for you" (note: referring to a post I just put up today) "Gary, write a story of how pipelines coming through our farmland is good for the economy" "Susan, go research all those timeshare stories and put in a story of how fractional ownership, bought retail, is a godsend to cash strapped retiring baby boomers" "Oh yah....add how they can profit from all the money they can make from renting those overpriced...ooops valuable assets"
Thought balloon...."Now have I forgotten any other "contributors" to my retirement portfolio and future board of directors possibilities?"
It makes me want to cry.

My fathers a Senior Editor for a rather large media outlet...He's been in the business since the early 70's started as a reporter and worked his way up without college or any kind of degree....Still working 12-16hr days now in his 60's

There ARE still editors like you remember....Those that understand where journalism came from and how to truly get the information out there...granted he's sold out a bit now, working with Medical Business news instead of the hard hitting journalism of his youth....

 

[SueDonJ]

I am picturing a hard boiled newspaper editor (think back to those movies from the 40's) bossing all the underlings around. " Bobby, go write a story on how cheese is good for you" (note: referring to a post I just put up today) "Gary, write a story of how pipelines coming through our farmland is good for the economy" "Susan, go research all those timeshare stories and put in a story of how fractional ownership, bought retail, is a godsend to cash strapped retiring baby boomers" "Oh yah....add how they can profit from all the money they can make from renting those overpriced...ooops valuable assets"
Thought balloon...."Now have I forgotten any other "contributors" to my retirement portfolio and future board of directors possibilities?"
It makes me want to cry.

Good gravy, this is an impossible assignment! Can't I just make up a crossword puzzle for the comics page instead?

(Hey, this is the fictional 40's, right? You're a grizzled old chain-smoking so-and-so with a soft side, and I'm a doll all squeezed in to a tight skirt with bright red lips and air for brain matter? You don't mean to say that I actually have to WORK if I want to stick around, do you?)

 

[Ridewithme38]

Good gravy, this is an impossible assignment! Can't I just make up a crossword puzzle for the comics page instead?

(Hey, this is the fictional 40's, right? You're a grizzled old chain-smoking so-and-so with a soft side, and I'm a doll all squeezed in to a tight skirt with bright red lips and air for brain matter? You don't mean to say that I actually have to WORK if I want to stick around, do you?)

Man! I miss the fictional 40's!

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

In the late 1970's, when I was employed by the State of California, one my responsibilities included interfacing with news reporters on stories involving the division in which I worked. I answered questions and provided background information on various matters.

In one case I was working with an assistant editor and a reporter on a story they were working on for about a week, leading to a Friday story. I spent a fair amount of time providing information, giving backgroiund, and being sure they understood the bigger picture - how the information originated, what roles were being played various agencies, giving them paper trail that led to the item that caught their attention.

Well, they ran the story and they reported some key facts incorrectly. This was information I had specifically reviewed with them, and gave them copies of the paper trail. What they reported was clearly inconsistent with the factual documents in their possession and that I had reviewed with them.

The following Monday I was able to visit their office in person and was able to get in to see the Assistant Editor. I asked him how they could have put out a story that they had to know was incorrect.

His reply was ........

"Yeah, but that didn't make a very good news story. So we rewrote it to make it better."

That was an Assistant Editor, employed by one of the principal and most well-known national news organizations. During what people above have described as the "Golden Age of Journalism" - before Fox existed, before USA Today, before CNN, etc.

*****

I had a lot of other similar incidents, though that was the only one where someone admitted that they deliberately changed the facts to make a "better story". Most of the time they said, "Oops, sorry." but it was clear that they weren't sorry at all and that the misreporting was deliberate.

There was one notable exception to that - the Sacramento Bee had a reporter working for them who was absolutely fanatical about getting the facts down correctly. Even complained to me one time when she wrote a story where she had inadvertently made some factual errors and our local field staff who had given her the information didn't call her to let her know that she had made a mistake with the data.

 

[AwayWeGo]

That's What I Mean By Jerna-Lizzum.

I was able to visit their office in person and was able to get in to see the Assistant Editor. I asked him how they could have put out a story that they had to know was incorrect.

His reply was ........

"Yeah, but that didn't make a very good news story. So we rewrote it to make it better."

That was an Assistant Editor, employed by one of the principal and most well-known national news organizations.

Lots of times it's not only a matter of making it "better," but also making it fit some agenda.

That's typical Jerna-Lizzum.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[ronparise]

Although as has been said here , freedom of the press is alive and well,, journalism is dead. or nearly so...there no money in it. When I was a kid there were 3 daily newspapers in Washington DC all supported by advertising, (and I delivered all three) the major papers all had foreign news bureaus and their own reporters....Now no paper boys, and no reporters...Why?...no advertisers...The classifieds used to be a major source of revenue, now not so much, why? the internet

 

[rosebud5]

Since when does "news" belong to anybody?

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Although as has been said here , freedom of the press is alive and well,, journalism is dead. or nearly so...there no money in it. When I was a kid there were 3 daily newspapers in Washington DC all supported by advertising, (and I delivered all three) the major papers all had foreign news bureaus and their own reporters....Now no paper boys, and no reporters...Why?...no advertisers...The classifieds used to be a major source of revenue, now not so much, why? the internet

I think that reports of the death of journalism are exaggerated.

The internet has not changed people's need for reliable information; it's merely disrupting the old print journalism format, along with the arrogance and elitism that has been an inherent part of that old format.

Out of the much of the internet some voices and sources will arise as worthy and credible, and those sources will ultimately be able to monetize that value, probably by being able to charge for the content.

 

[laurac260]

Good gravy, this is an impossible assignment! Can't I just make up a crossword puzzle for the comics page instead?

(Hey, this is the fictional 40's, right? You're a grizzled old chain-smoking so-and-so with a soft side, and I'm a doll all squeezed in to a tight skirt with bright red lips and air for brain matter? You don't mean to say that I actually have to WORK if I want to stick around, do you?)

Sue, just be careful when you go out to get your scoop piece. We all know how it goes, stunning sultry brunette/blonde/red head out in high heels, gets caught up in the wrong time/wrong place, she tries to flee, but inevitably her high heel trips her up and she falls and twists her ankle and ....well, we all know how it ends for you, don't we?

 

[SueDonJ]

Sue, just be careful when you go out to get your scoop piece. We all know how it goes, stunning sultry brunette/blonde/red head out in high heels, gets caught up in the wrong time/wrong place, she tries to flee, but inevitably her high heel trips her up and she falls and twists her ankle and ....well, we all know how it ends for you, don't we?

Well, if I play my cards right then Humphrey Bogart comes along and saves me from that two-bit newspaper job where they didn't take me seriously anyway. :hysterical:

 

[SueDonJ]

I think that reports of the death of journalism are exaggerated.

The internet has not changed people's need for reliable information; it's merely disrupting the old print journalism format, along with the arrogance and elitism that has been an inherent part of that old format.

Out of the much of the internet some voices and sources will arise as worthy and credible, and those sources will ultimately be able to monetize that value, probably by being able to charge for the content.

I'm just waiting for the day when the majority of the folks who use the internet as their source for news, are able to differentiate between what's real and what's not. Or what's on-point and what's sensationalized. Or even, sadly, what's worthy of being called news and what's not. The internet is a wonderful tool but tools are worthless in the hands of folks who don't know how to use them.

I do agree with you that the internet opens up true journalism opportunities to a degree never before seen, and also that the internet allows freedom of the press to flourish like it never has. But it's not without its pitfalls, and it's sad that the print media is suffering as much as it is because of the internet. A few months ago I canceled the Boston Globe subscription that has followed me to every new home for the last 32 years. It was honestly a sad day - that was the paper I delivered when I had a paper route in junior high! But the Globe doesn't use neighborhood paperkids anymore, and the content of the paper is suffering due to the proliferation of ads and filler material necessary to print it. Thankfully, my favorite Globe reporters, op/ed writers and sports columnists are available online or on TV. And the crosswords and sudokus can be printed off the website.