Fibbing Journalists: What should be done?

In this assignment, I have been asked to read two articles on individuals from larger news establishments who  have been caught in the act of fabricated lies about the people involved in their stories in order to make their articles seem more appealing to the public.  I then had to state my opinion on lies told in the world of journalism, based on a couple of thought-provoking questions issued to our class as a basis for our posts.  Here is what I had to say:

I am beginning to notice certain things about the news that I dislike, one of which is typos in written articles.  After a newspaper article starts to accumulate a certain number of typos, I question the credibility of the story, the person writing the story, and the newspaper as a whole.

Another thing is when televised news broadcast, or one from a radio, uses a misleading tone.

There have been some stories that I have gotten very upset over, one being a radio broadcast, I assume from CBC, that reported on a sighting of a "great ball of light pulling its way across the sky" made by a middle-aged or elderly couple and a friend as they were sitting around a campfire one fall night in Bathurst (I think.)  The man on the radio said something like "at around quarter to nine, the three noticed the dim light coming from the western sky.  It travelling to the east, and then as it approached the middle, it went all ablaze and became very bright.  The whole thing lasted for about three minutes, from the time it appeared to the time it faded out of sight."  The whole time I was listening to this I felt like slapping myself on the side of my head.  Being the nerd I am, the night before, I had stepped outside at that exact time to watch the International Space Station make its voyage across our New Brunswick skies in it's fixed orbit around the Earth.  The whole thing is predictable and there are any number of websites you can visit to find out when the next time will be that you can see the space station from where you live, so I can't even come to understand why these educated news personnel (or anyone else for that matter) either didn't know about the space station or refused to tell the couple and their friend that what they saw was not an UFO but one of mankind's most sophisticated research lab.  You would think that somewhere along the rout, from reporters and ground workers to editors and then to broadcasters, that the story would have been flagged as being at least a little bit 'questionable', but no.

Why would we do that? (sarcasm) Why ruin a good news scoop? Oh, simpletons!

Noticing these things, no, it does not surprise me that news establishments tend to take much enjoyment out of fibbing every now and again.

Jack Shafer, a journalist, once said that...

“Most liars make things up for the simple reason that they don't have the talent or the ability to get the story any other way.” 

In my personal opinion, yes, some do it because they lack talent, but that is not always the case.  The best liars actually are among the most talented and successful people in society because of their ability to manipulate people into doing what they want, so not all lies are made by untalented people, just by people who choose, either consciously or subconsciously, to lie.  In fact, the average human being will tell around three lies in a ten minute conversation with stranger!

There are those who I think are really talented in what they do, but just find themselves trapped or stumped.  Humans are humans, it is natural for us to lie.  I think that what people in journalism need to realize though is that they are in a public eye, addressing a public audience, and people really care and are effected by what you are writing.  Although it is tempting to fib, especially when you have something against the political person, company, group, etc. that the story concerns, when writing for the news, there is a neutrality that is required, and you must make an effort to maintain this.

*(For more on information on why humans lie, watch this video!)

Also for this assignment, I was asked to give my input on whether or not I felt that the universities are doing enough to insure that they are graduating journalism students who can handle the responsibilities of someone in the news world and I think it comes down to the personality of the person writing the story.  I am not very educated in what kind of environment that the average university or college provides their journalism students or what kind of attitudes they give towards aggressive forms of journalism, but I can only assume that the professors try their best to insure that they are teaching fair ways of portraying news.

I think that a newspaper ombudsman, a professional journalist whose sole responsibility is to respond to reader complaints and provide an independent critique of the paper's performance, does help to settle the complaints and concerns that the public has after an unfair news article gets published, but since it is said that he/she is giving their own personal critique of the news establishment, it can also be a threat to the establishment if the ombudsman's response is a negative one.  

When something like this happens, some feel that it is a sink or swim period for the newspaper/radio broadcaster or whatever it may be, and that could be true, but it also presents an opportunity for significant change.  In a book I have been reading recently, The Power of Habit, there is an entire section devoted to 'the power of a crisis.'  In it, the author of the book states that some of the strongest companies of today's world were, at one point or another, challenge by a crisis that both endangered the company and the jobs of its workers.  It is at moments like this when the most stubborn CEO's and people in 'top dog' positions become scared and are willing to, finally, listen to what educated people in lower positions and the public  have to say.  

So, that being said, if the people who have a say in the company are willing to listen to what the ombudsman thinks about the establishment -which areas are the most corrupt, etc.- then they can expect to see significant change over an insignificant period of time.  That is how they come to make their company stronger as a whole; they must learn to adapt, rearrange and rethink the structure of the company if they wish to advance and better themselves or the functionality of their business.