Accuracy and Relevancy

. Imagine the message we could send to the public if we began unveiling vastly more effective prevention and correction programs.

Imagine the resources we could waste if we took already shrinking newsrooms and news gathering institutions and burdened them with incessant fact checking? Okay so maybe I'm being too harsh, the error identification and correction process can (like everything else) be outsourced to a readership via the internet for free or pennies or pepsi points or something. What bothers me is that we're worrying about figures, surnames, times of day, and other relatively minor things but not the overall quality of our news.

Sure the facts may be more accurate, and the material more technically correct but doesn't that seem like a kind of veil for quality when compared to the generally toothless, dumbed down, and irrelevant content and coverage major news organizations provide anyway? Silverman treats the lameness of current mainstream media as an elephant in the room, and for what? Some factual errors?

Besides isn't it possible that over-checking facts could delay the flow and pertinence of news?

So maybe gross errors are caused, at their roots, by poor reporting practices. This gentleman may be a thorough reporter in a traditional sense who is known for accuracy and thoughtfulness in his work, in a practical sense though he's wildly ignorant. Postering, something which has gone on for decades and has been integral to popular youth music since even he was a teen, seemed a crime to him. I can't decide which was more pathetic, his ignorance of street teaming or his antiquated 30's new dealing take on the activity.

Who cares about mainstream newsmedia anyway? Especially when we have things like this taking their place. Before you write this post off know I'm not a vice lover. But VBS is pretty much proof that many of the broadcast formalities we're taught aren't the only way. That an effective and moving message, here a picture of cultural and political life in North Korea, can be created easily and viewed on demand. Watch that clip and think of the tired adage "show me don't tell me".

I welcome a time when a touching newscast is no longer Dan Rather tearing up at his copy but instead a North American alcoholic screaming Anarchy in the U.K. at people who've never heard rock n' roll.