Burriss: Self-inflicted media wounds

BY LARRY BURRISS

All things considered, it's been a pretty bad last couple of weeks for the media. Unfortunately all of the damage has been self-inflicted.

Let's start with one of the traditional broadcast news organizations: ABC News. A network correspondent was reporting from the scene of a kidnapping, but apparently the crime location wasn't dramatic enough, so someone on the news team took a piece of police crime scene tape and strung it between two camera stands.

What I learned in journalism school more than a few years ago is you don't fake the news. You don't fake interviews, you don't fake facts and you don't fake the crime scene.

Some correspondents don't seem to have learned those lessons.

Another channel, Fox, had its own stumble, or rather, two stumbles on the same story. First, Fox News, relying on anonymous sources, reported an FBI indictment of Hillary Clinton was likely. The anchor reporting the story later said there were no facts to back up the statement.

Fox News also reported five foreign intelligence agencies might have hacked Clinton's e-mail server. The channel later said there was no evidence of such a breach.

Actually these errors are just part of what appears to be a serious breakdown in news verification. Over the past few weeks we've seen numerous hoax news stories reported as real, including fake stories about scrubbed e-mails, Amish voting blocks and Satanic dinners.

Given the paranoia on both sides, I also have to wonder if campaign supporters posing as news reporters are simply trying to manipulate the language any way they can, even turning the most innocuous statement into political theater. Or deliberately creating misunderstandings where there are none.

This election season we've seen more attacks on the media than ever before, from both the left and the right. And these self-inflicted wounds only make the public even more suspicious of what we do and why we do it.