And very briefly …

[blamebrampton]

There are a lot of Leveson predictive responses floating about, so I am just going to throw my hat into the ring.

I think that it is very hard to regulate the media in a way that doesn't create bigger problems than it solves.

However, I also think that if you legislated that all factual corrections must be printed, and printed in the same part of the paper and with similar weight to the original story, a lot of errors would stop happening and a lot of people would stop believing a lot of rubbish long after it had been shown to be rubbish.

Please forgive me if I don't respond to comments quickly: off to write and/or fall over in a snot-filled heap.

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I think it would be a really good step if they inforced the laws we already had and banged people up for phone hacking and bribing the filth.

For starters.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Yes, that would be a good beginning.

But I am quite serious about the fact that we in the media are rubbish about dealing with error. It's particularly bad with science, where we often reinforce earlier mistakes that have been thoroughly disproved in the name of 'balance'.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I see stuff in the Guardian all the time which is absolute bollocks, and they're sort of more open about errors being corrected because they have a column that deals with it...

But they just keep on making mistakes, and not investigating stuffs properly and leaping to conclusions.

I yearn for a proper news feed that tells you the unvarnished truth and reports opinion as clear opinion. The BBC is still best at this.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

The BBC is currently the best, I agree, though one positive development at the Guardian and elsewhere is going back in time to put large errata notices on cached stories that have got it badly wrong, and quickly correcting current ones with details of the correction, rather than just rewriting or deleting.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

And the BBC is regulated.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

The success of regulation for television and radio is what makes me think it's not necessarily doomed as an idea for print, though it still makes me nervous. Absolute impartiality is very difficult to achieve, though, and then people start to censor themselves in unwise ways, as recently.

Gawd, it's all too hard with a cold, I am going back to writing fic and unclean thoughts regarding Richard Armitage.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Seems reasonable.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

That's not solvable by law, only by hiring journalists and editors who actually know about science.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I have a 10,000 word essay on this, but I have to finish other things first. The absolute loss of expertise from within the industry over the last 10 years is just a disaster.

Though legislating to deal with error in a fairer and more prominent way would be an incentive to hire people based on skills and not on the cheapest available.

[lokifan]

Absolutely. So agreed that a lot of media regulation ends up making things worse - but corrections NEED TO HAPPEN. I remember hearing a year or so back about the Sun, Daily Mirror and the Daily Fail all reporting about a TERRORIST CELL OF EVIL MUSLIMS WHO HAD BEEN HIRED AS OLYMPICS CLEANERS AND PLANNING TO BLOW SHIT UP. Which was utter utter bollocks and they didn't print even teeny corrections.