Can't the news media get ANYTHING right?

[oldred]

Article about an American built Iranian F5 Phantom jet fighter, F5? F-FIVE Phantom? The F4 Phantom is one of the most recognizable fighter jets ever built yet they called it the F5 in the article topic headliner and in the description in the story, the F5 is a totally different plane. This does relate to what we have been discussing lately about our shooting sport, whether it be guns or fighter jets the news media seems to get way too much wrong and the public does not seem to know the difference or even care.


http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/21/report-2-iranian-pilots-killed-in-f-5-phantom-fighter-crash-near-iraq-border/?test=latestnews

[wallenba]

F5 is the Freedom fighter (Tiger). We sold a lot of these to other countries, including S.Viet Nam and Iran. U.S. uses it as an 'aggressor' for air combat training. Although Iran does have a lot of F4's too. Fact that it carried two indicates it was an F4.

[Trey45]

Can't the news media get ANYTHING right?

No as a matter of fact, they can't.

[oldred]

Fact that it carried two indicates it was an F4.

I never even caught that and I was thinking the description could have been either aircraft but you're right that means it most likely really was a Phantom. Unless I am mistaken the F5E was the only version of the F5 with two seats and it was primarily used as a trainer although it was fully combat capable.

[GabbyM]

Iran has F5E’s and a modified version called the Saegheh. Iran claims the Saegheh to be an Iraian built from scratch jet “superior to the American F-18.” Yep I’d like to see that one work for them, lol.

Article reads F5 Phantom which is some ghost ship that never existed. To our media any fighter is a phantom and any military vehicle is a tank. I’ve heard the idiots call a Hummer with a gun mounted on top a tank. Of course the Bradley’s and M113’s are generally referred to as tanks. About like that company man supervisor we had once in a machine shop. Large company. One night I had to explain to him the difference between a lathe and a milling machine. So he’d quit making a fool of himself.

[Marvin S]

It sure makes it hard to trust or believe anything you hear. Its all about who gets the story out first, however inaccurate it may be. The majority of the public wont know any different.

[oldred]

Iran claims the Saegheh to be an Iraian built from scratch jet “superior to the American F-18.”

Yeah SURE it is! I know which one I would put my money on and it ain't no stinkin Jihad plane!


I bet a dogfight between that *** and an F18 would be comical to watch!:popcorn:

[Trey45]

Comical for what... maybe 18 seconds? How long do you reckon it would take the F18 to turn that Saegheh into a flaming mass of scrap metal... maybe 18 seconds is my guess.

[TXGunNut]

I've been very disappointed, often amused by news coverage and give it very little credibilty. That's one reason I quit watching TV. TV news is mostly about sensationalism and selling ads. I remember one time the local paper got it right, tho. 90% of the article was verbatim from my report! Didn't even get a byline. :wink:

[MtGun44]

Requirement that you be stupid and lazy to be a report, it would seem.
They get all tech stuff wrong most of the time.

Bill

[theperfessor]

Technical knowledge is not a requirement for journalists and is not taught in schools to the little gems that want to become print/broadcast reporters. Where I work the faculty advisor to the school student newspaper is about as leftist/liberal as you can imagine. You can probably guess the political slant of the gems who write the stories for the canary cage liner.

[cajun shooter]

IIRC it was Will Rogers that said "I believe nothing that I read and only half of what I see"
Back when I was a working Narcotics Agent we had a newspaper reporter approach our captain and he requested permission to embed himself into our unit. The captain to our surprise granted his wishes. We could not understand his decision as we had a very tight unit that required any new member applicant to have a 100% confidence vote by all members. The reason for this was not that we were a secret unit but we did have very sensitive information about suspects and we faced armed suspects every day. We had to be sure that every person there had a shut mouth on what they read or heard and they also had to be trusted when the SHTF. We could not trust even other cops with some of our information.
He worked with us for about 5 months without problem, then we had a shooting where the suspect was killed. The reporter wrote and released a detailed article in our local paper about the shooting before he was granted a press release by the captain. The article was full of misinformation and it even had the agents name that did the shooting which was a big No No. He wrote that we used a unauthorized gun and that the agent should not of had it on the raid. There were other mistakes but I won't go into the complete details. There may have been two correct sentences in the entire 6 paragraph article. His article was used by a defence attorney to file a lawsuit against the entire unit.
We ended up in Federal Court and spent several hours fighting and WINNING the suit. We had plenty of proof that the reporter had fabricated the article and the winning of the suit was easy but time consuming.
Our Captain realized that he had made a mistake. We found out from the reporters co-workers that he was wanting to gather material from a working Narcotics Unit to pen a book deal.
I will never talk to a reporter again. Later David

[wv109323]

Most people that attend journalism classes are politically left. Or the mass media is liberal. Many know nothing about the technical aspects of the story that they are reporting on. This ignorance combined with the sensationalism that they interject to get the scoop ( and the TV ratings) results into pure garbage.
To witness, The coal mining tragedies that happen in my area, it is hard for me to even phantom what they are trying to say and I am a Mining Engineer.

[oldred]

It's not always just the reporters and sometimes even officials are guilty of sensationalism, some years back there was a fire at an industrial park here in Tn and on the local TV station a reporter was interviewing one of the firemen at the scene. In the background was a very large cryotank that was used for liquid Nitrogen and it was very clearly marked as such, the reporter was pointing at the tank and saying it was a miracle the fire was brought under control before it reached that tank. The fireman responded in a, to put it bluntly, stupid manner by saying "yes it's a good thing we got to it in time because if the fire had of ignited that tank the entire community could have gone up"! Ignite a NITROGEN tank????? Was the fireman that dumb or was he just trying to be in the spotlight? I mean after all Nitrogen would make an excellent fire extinguisher and in fact is the very gas that keeps the Earth's atmosphere from igniting, I think any fireman would know that! I suppose a fire could have caused a massive leak of liquid Nitrogen but in that case it was in a safe area and besides the fireman was plainly talking about the tank contents catching fire and exploding.


Then it seems every single time there is a jet crash there is always the mention of "dangerous high octane jet fuel". In the first place jet fuel is little more than high grade Kerosene and has no octane rating! Then even if it did an octane rating on fuel has absolutely nothing to do with how dangerous or flammable it would be in an aircraft crash, still "high octane jet fuel" is the first thing out of those idiots' mouths.

[Sensai]

Back in the days of raw C-band news feeds from "on the scene", I would watch the raw feeds and then watch the edited news reports on TV. If it wasn't so tragic it would be comical. It didn't even sound like they were reporting on the same event! That was even before the digital equipment would let them literally put words in your mouth. I agree with cajun shooter, I won't talk to any reporter about anything. There's no telling what I'll say, whether I say it or not!!!

[oldred]

I used to watch those raw feeds also and they definitely were entertaining! What struck me was just how rude and obviously conceited most of the reporters were, they talked to their crew in a very rude manner and seemed much more concerned about their appearance than getting the news right.

[Rick Hodges]

I used to see myself "quoted" in the local paper with regularity. No one ever talked to me and most of the time what they wrote was wrong. Someone told them I was the officer in charge of the case, they would print whatever they thought happened and attribute it to me.

Sometime in the 60's and 70's journalism schools stopped believing in getting the story right. It was all about doing "good" having a "positive influence" on society. Facts became optional and the object was to further the agenda towards an "enlightened society".

Don't even get me started on the so called "Social Sciences". Hell the same biases have spilled over into the hard sciences too....who bothers with control groups anymore......cherry pick your data to prove your point....instead of proving or disproving a hypothesis.