MMMM # 259 -- "True" & Consequences

     What is truth? Student in my TV-Radio course learn in their first class that the one rule with no exceptions is that their copy must be true. But it takes more than a single session to cover the meaning of the word. Are you writing the truth if you quote someone, and that person is lying? Sure. How about if you have reason to believe the person is wrong? Uh...
     Anyway, questions about the truth were all across the media landscape this past week.

     There was one story in which FOX News used The National Enquirer as its source. Truth?

     And Sports Journalism also had a week of defending truth falsehood telling.
     Notre Dame's Manti Te'o was defending his own truth...an apparently made-up online girlfriend who "died", and, of course, Lance Armstrong, who admitted his years of lies about performance enhancing drugs. Were sports journalists too willing to accept both "truths"?
     Washington Post columnist Melinda Henneberger saw the contradiction in the Te'o story immediately. Why was Notre Dame so willing to go along with the fake sports story, but covered up the  true story she had detailed about players being allowed to compete against Alabama despite sexual abuse charges against them?
     [added]---And Diane McWhorter rips into The Birmingham News in a New York Times Op-Ed piece for what she says was their failure to report the truth, and for complicit behavior during The Civil Rights era, suggesting they have blood on their hands.]


[PLUS: In case you missed it...The University of Texas built a beautiful new $54-Million "new media" building, and then decided to ban old media from it. A box for distributing the student newspaper was located in front of the building, but administrators had it removed because of worries about trash...not the kind in he paper, but discarded paper littering the grounds. Perhaps they should have installed a charging station for pads instead? The decision by "lower assistant deans" was later withdrawn and the machine is back.]

[AND: She's just one person, but students considering journalism may want to read this article by an Indian woman who had a great job as a reporter for the BBC and decided to make an early career U-Turn.]

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com.]