Source:
San Francisco ChronicleBy Leslie GriffithIt's been a long, slow slide for CNN. The once-proud cable news pioneer has consistently crawled under the media's lowering bar, but this week it blazed a new trail to the bottom.
... Now we get CNN's titillating installment, which involves an alleged cell-phone video of a Libyan woman being sexually abused by alleged Gaddhafi loyalists and, for good measure, complete with all the repulsive details and heart-breaking screams. But this is where we have to pay close attention ... because the reporter told us in the content of the story that it could actually be nothing more than planted propaganda.
She cautions: "We've been unable to verify its authenticity. We don't know where it was taken, or when, or by whom."
... In any responsible newsroom, that alone is reason enough not to publish the story or run the video. Without confirmation and without knowing where and from whom it came, it is little more than a baseless story with no attribution. In fact, after running the story, CNN is in danger of propagating what appears to have become a massive disinformation campaign to drum up support for a war. And that's why reporters and editors always ask for multiple sources, direct attribution and some concrete evidence that the story is indeed based in fact. This is chapter one in any journalist's textbook. It keeps reporters from becoming little more than mouthpieces or stenographers and, Murrow Forbid, from reporting lies.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/griffith/detail?entry_id=91289Leslie Griffith is a former anchorwoman at KTVU Oakland.
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