Fair and ... untruthful?

The problem with newspapers is that once something's written, it's forever remembered that way. Any information, whether true or false, in an original story is perceived by readers as the actual, honest to God, truth. And it's almost impossible to scrape away misinformation from people's minds once it's been in print.\nThere's a limited amount of space and time reporters have to address topics; therefore, many times after the paper has been printed, some new and shocking twist appears and puts the old articles firmly into the "old news" file. \nOr worse, it becomes too late to rectify the printed fallacies. Many people -- especially those with a personal or political agenda -- use this flaw in newspaper's design to influence others. This brings me to the example of David Horowitz.\nLast week, I thought about attending Horowitz's lecture discussing the rampant liberalization of college students by professors, but I decided against it. Either I would fume silently and hate myself for getting involved, or I might be the most recent in the long and prestigious line of students throwing things on lecturers' heads. Feelings would be hurt, and someone, hopefully not me, would run out crying. Besides, there turned out to be enough trouble without me.\nHorowitz ran into some problems last month when one of his primary examples of liberal indoctrination turned out to be less than completely true.\nThe Students for Academic Freedom, Horowitz's group looking to counteract the unbridled political imbalance of college professors, hit a roadblock but still tried to spin it as a victory. The claim in question was that a University of Northern Colorado professor created an exam with the question "Explain why George W. Bush is a war criminal" and then failed a student for writing why Saddam Hussein was a war criminal. A March 15 report by www.InsideHigherEd.com found that almost every part of the SAF's story was false. The exam didn't have that question, the student did not receive an F and, to top it all off, the professor is a registered Republican. Despite admitting that the story turned out to have major holes in it, Horowitz still claimed it as a victory for the SAF.\nBut before the truth about the SAF came to light, Horowitz's story circled the media. And other stories in the media have had the same fate -- an early scoop, later discovered to have misinformation. \nIn the sad case of Terri Schiavo, the "fact" often repeated by the news media was that the American populace was strongly divided on whether to remove her feeding tube. If you believed what CNN, Fox News and the majority of mainstream papers told you, you would think there was a great struggle going on between those who believed in a right-to-die and those who didn't.\nAs it turns out, 65 percent of the country agreed with her husband making the decision, and only 25 percent disagreed, according to an ABC/Washington Post poll. In that same poll, which was representative of other polls taken across the country at the time, 87 percent of Americans would not want to remain on life-support if they were in a similar situation to Schiavo's. \nWhen the media jumps to conclusions about the nation's political climate or what issue is most concerning the American people, it distorts people's perceptions of actual events.\nSo often with current events, we speak first and find out the facts later. Sometimes, those of us who speak to the public need to calm down and take a good hard look at what unfolds before we report it as truth. If the story develops, we owe it to our readers to inform them on the changes.