I See An America

I read the news today, oh boy! For a minute there I thought that Steve Jobs had died. It appears that an "electronic gaffe at news outlet Bloomberg mistakenly sent an incomplete obituary for Apple CEO Steve Jobs over the wire on Wednesday afternoon." Well, at least it wasn't a complete obituary. Of course, this isn't the first time the news has been wrong.

Follow up:

Other famous premature announcements include Mark Twain's death and Dewey defeating Truman. So what makes this time around more significant? Perhaps nothing, but to me it is just an underscoring of the disturbing trend in today's media to be first with the story, regardless of the facts. Old school required two separate sources before a story would be published. New school says a whisper of a rumor is all that's needed, and in the absence of said rumor, it's OK to make up the story. The media is supposed to be the watchdog for society, not the pump primer for scary stories and fear mongering. I can only hope that we, as a society, start wising up and turning off, tuning out the media. I used to work in news, working for the CBS affiliate in my home town. I took pride in the professionalism of our staff--in fact the first US reporter to visit China after the Vietnam War came from our station and won a Peabody Award for his efforts. Regrettably, I haven't watched a newscast since 1996 which to me was the start of the news media's downward cycle. Yet, I remain, as always interested in current events and real news. These days, Yahoo! is my go-to source for what's going on in the world. What's yours?