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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jimpit who wrote (4059)	5/3/2000 11:30:00 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

<<In your opinion, of course. LOL> Well, since you brought it up, no. You see, I, unlike NewsMax, know the difference between fact and opinion. Yes, even the New Your Times sometimes lets it's point of view show through in its news articles and headlines. Happens in any news product. Even when people scrupulously try to be unbiased, a little can creep in. But at the NYT they at least have some editorial standards and make a stab at living up to them. NewsMax, on the other hand, doesn't seem to either know or care about some of the basics of journalism--things I learned about in the seventh grade. You'd think that an outfit purporting to be a news organization would know them. For example, take this headline. newsmax.com <<Sunday April 30, 2000; 1:35 PM EDT Cuban Doctor Caught Taking Tranquilizers to Elian On Thursday U.S. Customs officials at Washington's Dulles International Airport confiscated several medications carried by Elian Gonzalez's Cuban pediatrician, who was en route to the 6-year-old's temporary residence at Maryland's Wye River Plantation.>> In this case, the story was in the first paragraph. The headline could have accurately read "Cuban Doctor Caught Bringing Tranquilizers into U.S." but it went way beyond the facts of the story. The story explains what medications the doctor had in his black bag and what they're used for. It does not report that Elian was given any of the drugs or even any evidence that the drugs were intended for him, although it does report that there have been rumors of Elian being drugged and suggests that as the explanation for the presence of the drugs. In it's inference that the drugs were for Elian, it doesn't make the equally plausible inference that the drugs were just what a doctor might routinely carry in his black bag or that they may have been intended for Juan Miguel or anyone in the party who was struggling with the stress of this situation. The news article wasn't so bad, but that headline was clearly misleading and inflammatory. All of the above is my opinion. But this is fact: ya' gotta get past Journalism 101 before ya' get credence. Karen