IJ
Then if we are more or less in agreement that its as
you put it essentially
"infotainment" and as
I put it really just to
"sell air time" then its conclusions really should not be trusted yes???????
I personally would hesitate to put this in the same catagory of " investigative jounalism" as say Watergate or other serious works.
Also not sure that setting up a artifical situation, inventing and scripting a situtaion that is as charged as one can possibly make it, using paid professional, actors to "sell" it counts as either "fair reporting" or "investigative journalism."
Both IMO rather strongly imply accurate reporting of the facts of an
actual situation.....not essentially putting on a play and "reporting" on peoples reactions to it.
People sometimes get emotional over "Death of a Salesmen" and its probably pretty accurate in terms of the lives of some salespeople and their families.........but unless your Jason Blair (???) few people would call writing a story about it as if it were real.... "reporting."
I was pretty clear at what was "upsetting" me....honestly never thought of it as a "discrimnatory attack on middle America" just thought it was sloppy sensationalism......but now that you mention it....could be.
I was also pretty clear that one of the big things that was bugging me was the emotional/mental stress that people just going about their daily lives were forced to suffer.
IMO its arguable abusive, its why there are rules that legit studies are required to follow.
I mean here we have grown men that can't keep from crying and one girl was so upset/hysterical she could not even speak---these people were not volunteers in some study--they were just normal people going about their daily lives--until they had the misfortune to wander into John Quinones street theater.
And if we can excuse that level of abuse...where does the line get drawn?
(not too long ago, on this very forum, people seriously posited that putting hardened terrorists thu that kind (ballpark) of emotional/mental stress was tantmount to illegal torture----torture that might cause long term harms.)
The "bias" is in how they framed the story--the results clearly surprised them---yet they
still spun the story in line with its orignal premise....even when the results did not arguably justify doing so.
Nope, that roughly
3xs or more than
twice (6 people to 18 or 6-13) as many people stood up for the lady as opposed to those that agreed with the clerk should indicate that even by such rough numbers she should be getting many more postive experiences as negative.
Which
in no way invalidates the negative but it should put it better
perspective.
I'd like to have a day where 13-18 total strangers got so mad at how badly I was being treated that they yelled at the people doing it and stormed out of the business yelling that they lost a customer for life.
You can and should be pissed at bigoted idiots being bigoted idiots....but that should not blind you to the
much larger groups of people standing up for you.
If one can't see that, recognize it, and take some comfort in it, have some well justified hope over it...then they are just as big a pessimist as I'm oft accused of being.
Also spinning 20 some people that did nothing as being indicative of bias---or not explaining---as you took the time to do--that people doing nothing is the
norm just makes it worse.
Besides, like I said, spinning the real problem as some old bigot when fathers are killing their kids because they want to have the rights that living in a free country provide would seem to be a larger more serious issue.
Cab drivers refusing to pick up blind people because their seeing eye dogs are "unclean" would seem to me to be a story with a bit more serious implications.
Clerks refuseing to handle pork products or beer/wine/etc would seem to me to be just as serious.
Cab drivers refuseing to pick people up because they are carrying wine would seem to be just as serious to me.
You find bigotry everywhere--and in many forms.....and context tends to count.
And I respectfully disagree, I think John Quinones, if he lays any claim to being objective that is---needs to report more than one side of an issue.....people can't logically lambast Fox News for
not being "fair and balanced" while giving John Quinones a pass.
At least Bill O'Reilly puts people on his segements that hold opposite views----Quinones didn't even take that teeny tiny little step.
Not saying its right...just pointing out that if the argumement becomes essentially "its not his responsibilty" then what does that say about jounalism?
Whom can be trusted to provide accruate information at that point?