The Media is allowed to lie

[stkelly52]

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/02/28/arpubmg022803.htm

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.
On August 18, 2000, a six-person jury was unanimous in its conclusion that Akre was indeed fired for threatening to report the station's pressure to broadcast what jurors decided was "a false, distorted, or slanted" story about the widespread use of growth hormone in dairy cows. The court did not dispute the heart of Akre's claim, that Fox pressured her to broadcast a false story to protect the broadcaster from having to defend the truth in court, as well as suffer the ire of irate advertisers.

Fox argued from the first, and failed on three separate occasions, in front of three different judges, to have the case tossed out on the grounds there is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the news. The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdock, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves.

In its six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission position against news distortion is only a "policy," not a promulgated law, rule, or regulation.

Fox aired a report after the ruling saying it was "totally vindicated" by the verdict.


That last line is interesting, Yeah sure we lie, so what?

[oykib]

I'm not a lawyer. But this doesn't seem to mean that it's okay to lie. It says that she was not wrongfully terminated for threatening to go public with the info that they made her lie.

I also don't know anything about the case. However, it seems that she may have hd a stronger one had she not initially caved. If she had been fired for refusing to lie on the air, perhaps she would've won.

[Ksyrup]

That last line is probably the crux of the case, as there are specific rules for how agencies make rules. I don't practice in the Federal administrative arena, but in Florida, "non-rule policy" (implementing policy without properly promulgating a rule setting forth the policy) will be struck by a Florida court as invalid.

I know it sounds bad, but if you think about it, just in the past few weeks, we have been lied to countless times. All of the "we have no information" type comments from the press are likely hiding the fact that they know, but the government has asked that the information not be revealed for security purposes.

Plus, I don't know where the idea that the media is (as opposed to should be) objective and unbiased comes from. Most stories are written from one side or the other, and with that, comes the slanted truth, or omission of facts, or outright deception. The media is not just about reporting facts, its about trying to get the reader to believe the point of view of the writer - it's natural for any of us to write that way.

Think about every TV news magazine's coverage of a "murder mystery" - I can't recall seeing one that didn't spend 90% of the time explaining the case from the victim/prosecution standpoint, and then at the end - oh by the way - here's some potentially exculpatory evidence that would support the defense. Whether the defendant is guilty isn't really the issue, because the coverage was so slanted that you really couldn't come to any other conclusion.

[GrantDawg]

If newspapers couldn't lie, where would the National Inquirer, The Globe, and the Washington Post get all of their news stories?