Well I know this post is going to be about news.com.au but seriously they've even gone further downhill than the usual 'scientific boffin' and latest 'glassing joust'

I've noticed recently a number of stories which are pretty much Reddit articles - formatted a little differently and reposted as fact.

This is completely and totally fucked. What the hell happened to actual real journalism? It's really not right that people take shit which can be completely made up (most of the internet) and repost it as a factual story. Even though Today Tonight and ACA have been doing it for years - it's totally and completely fucked that this is happening to more and more mainstream media these days.

Here are some examples

http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/cant-touch-this-confession-of-hotel-employees/story-e6frfq80-1226461550850

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/aussie-tragedy-the-terrible-price-of-coming-out/story-fndo48ca-1226446628117

http://www.news.com.au/news/ask-me-anything-barack-obama-man-of-the-people/story-fnejlrpu-1226461576553

http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/reddit-user-flies-around-the-world-helping-others/story-e6frfq80-1226449235192

Social media is great for new impacts and events but for everyday news reporting it's just a total cop out. I'm sure now that most journalists don't actually leave the office, but spend it inside F5ing websites and reposting the same crap with zero factchecking.

:(

A new low? Isn't this simply news.com.au business as usual?

I wouldn't call this a new low - last week they had, on the front page: "Is this Prince Harry's pseudonym on Facebook?"

I fizzled from the butt when all the kony stuff was going viral on the internet thanks to these "news" sites.

Only had to do about 1 minute of googling to realise it was all bullshit and the facts were not aligned with the claims.

last edited by parabol at 15:28:06 30/Aug/12

Have you ever read a news article about something that you actually know about yourself?
You notice they get it sooo wrong.
Then you realise that...hang on... maybe all news articles are wrong!!?

Most of them were on fairfax as well, they probably pay the same social media monitoring company, or it now pushes stories to the wire.

I thought this was going to be about the 'twitter attack' sending some nobody from top model to hospital

Have you ever read a news article about something that you actually know about yourself?
You notice they get it sooo wrong.
Then you realise that...hang on... maybe all news articles are wrong!!?

like when they do the technobabble on ncis/csi/lawn order/bones/every cop show ever.

Quick, the suspect is trying to hijack our firewall and infiltrate our packets, set up a secondary isolation barrier to contain his ip and reverse flush his modem.

the fuck?

Why do you people even visit news.com.au? We all know it's the shittest source of news on the planet, yet you still go there. If you don't go there, then they wont get hits, which equates to less revenue.

But it's like people whinging about CoD games being shit and over priced, but still buying them.

I thought journalism hit a new low when Andrew Bolt got his own TV show. Could they at least give Annabel Crabb her own TV show to balance things out a little (yes, I know she holds Labor to account unlike Bolt holding the Libs to account.)

All your journalism questions can be answered by the newsroom. ha

These articles are all about getting ratings(hits) they dont care about truth/facts. The more people they can get the better it is for them.

Looks like the same old low to me

I no longer visit the website, not even to click on articles that people are all like "omg this is the most retarded article!".

THAT'S WHY THEY WRITE THEM. If you click on them, they win. If you click on them and comment on how dumb they are, they win even more.

Only had to do about 1 minute of googling to realise it was all bullshit and the facts were not aligned with the claims.

yeah it was good, it was a fun going around shitting in peoples kony posts on facebook with some actual facts and killing there warm and fuzzy feeling buz