Newspeople are truly the lowest life form.
They’re dishonest, they’re bought and sold by corporations and politicians. Or they’re as dumb as dirt.
How do I know this? In a previous life, I used to work for those who bought them— and we bought them cheap. They’ll edit, doctor, fix, omit, expand, distort, spin, and lie as they are told by their masters.
But they’ll also “overegg the pudding” if it serves the purpose of sensationalism.
I suppose images from the recent earthquake in Central Italy weren’t bad enough, so that sorry excuse for a national news agency (ANSA) had to embellish. Can you believe this? Embellish, after 292 people died?
Today—August 29, 2016—the ANSA website’s landing page features a photograph of the devastation wrought by the earthquake in the town of Amatrice. Notice how the old clock tower lists an impossible 20 degrees off plumb (by the way, the celebrated leaning tower in Pisa leans a mere 4 degrees).
Well, it’s not true. The picture is not straight, the lean angle has been added by the journos.
(Yes, they’ll tell you—they wanted to get the crane nice and vertical…)
Look at the same clock tower in a photo by Thomson Reuters, another news agency which evidently didn’t need to stoop so low.Another picture—this one from a Fire Brigade drone—shows the very same clock tower standing proud in a sea of rubble.
Now, there’s a novel idea! Let’s use drones as reporters.They don’t have to stick to anybody’s narrative and you only buy them once.