There's a tendency for the news media in America to have a distinct bias in favor of the victims of crime and against the alleged perpetrators. Even though news stories have gotten better about clarifying that people accused of crimes are not necessarily guilty, they still tell stories in ways that are unfavorable to alleged perpetrators.
I was struck by this most recently by a story in our local newspaper, AnnArbor.com. The online version of the story can be found here. The print version is largely the same, except with an even more provocative headline. Basically, a driver hit two dogs and didn't stop. What I take issue with, though, is that the story echoes without questioning an accusation made by the owner of the dogs and another witness. Namely, that the driver hit the dogs intentionally.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and the paper basically takes the word of the owner and the witness without a question. We don't even know who the driver is, and we certainly haven't heard his side of the story. Its irresponsible to just parrot people's accusations without confirmation of the facts.
(By the way, even if the driver didn't hit the dogs intentionally, he's still a horrible person for not stopping. I'm not defending him on that point. But when the facts are in question or up to interpretation, the newspaper shouldn't make baseless accusations.)
I was struck by this most recently by a story in our local newspaper, AnnArbor.com. The online version of the story can be found here. The print version is largely the same, except with an even more provocative headline. Basically, a driver hit two dogs and didn't stop. What I take issue with, though, is that the story echoes without questioning an accusation made by the owner of the dogs and another witness. Namely, that the driver hit the dogs intentionally.
That's a pretty serious accusation, and the paper basically takes the word of the owner and the witness without a question. We don't even know who the driver is, and we certainly haven't heard his side of the story. Its irresponsible to just parrot people's accusations without confirmation of the facts.
(By the way, even if the driver didn't hit the dogs intentionally, he's still a horrible person for not stopping. I'm not defending him on that point. But when the facts are in question or up to interpretation, the newspaper shouldn't make baseless accusations.)
No comments:
Post a Comment
I encourage commenters to use their real name, although I do not require it.
Blogger employs an automatic spam filtering algorithm for comments. If a non-spam comment has been filtered out, email source4politics@gmail.com and the issue will be investigated.