On 1/3/2025 at 3:07 PM, charliearon said:

Oh, sorry you don't get Faux Snews!  😴

Like CNN and CNBC are reporting ONLY the truth.  HA!

4 hours ago, spilok said:

Like ... are reporting ONLY the truth. 

Nobody's reporting the truth, because nobody knows the truth.  If you've even been close to a major news story and have inside information, it's obvious. That's not just my take, Heinlein wrote about it in one of his non-fiction books.

People make mistakes, they get things wrong, they report their best guesses supported by whatever fact checking they can do based on current information and their access to fact checkers. Then they filter it through their biases and spin things into oblivion and the actual newsmakers are either laughing or are horrified.

Hang in there.

Hook

How many of you remember Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, Paul Harvey and all the news you could easily understand and digest in 30 minutes?  Progress....BAH!

Noel

Giant cats are real. Giant monkeys are not.

4 hours ago, LHookins said:

Nobody's reporting the truth, because nobody knows the truth.  If you've even been close to a major news story and have inside information, it's obvious. That's not just my take, Heinlein wrote about it in one of his non-fiction books.

People make mistakes, they get things wrong, they report their best guesses supported by whatever fact checking they can do based on current information and their access to fact checkers. Then they filter it through their biases and spin things into oblivion and the actual newsmakers are either laughing or are horrified.

Absolutely. I can cite a non-critical example. 4th of July was always a big event at the Presidio, which was an open post to the public. There would be a stage area sponsored by a local radio station with performances by bands and celebrities, followed by a fireworks show.

One time while on the Military Police Desk, I answered a call from a local TV station.  The person asked how many people were attending, so I put him on hold for a few minutes after telling him I’d check. I contacted a unit on scene who said “it’s huge, at least 60,000”.  We on the desk looked at each other and said “No way!”  We attributed his response to him being from Northern California near Oregon, where the population density is maybe 2 or 3 people per square mile, so a crowd here would look enormous.  We asked another unit who replied  “5,000”, which we also discounted to his being upset that he had to pull duty that day. 

So  it was somewhere between 5,000 to 60,000, and the reporter was on hold.  We went into action similar to what happened in this episode of “Taxi”, where Jim accidentally started a fire in Louie’s apartment, and Jim’s father offered to pay for it:

We had to come up with a figure that sounded pretty good, but not too big to strain credibility.  We settled on 25,000 and I told it to the reporter.

Later on, we turned the TV we had in the back room to Channel 2, to see if they would report on the crowd size.  Sure enough, they reported a crowd of 25,000.  We cheered and gave each other high fives; us knuckleheads on the Desk pulled it off.

They reported it on the news so it had to be true, right?

Since we are now going down this path, I will only say...

😁

 

Edited January 7, 20251 yr by stans