|
| February 08, 2010: It makes good sense to be critical of media pieces... |
|
Just because "it is in the paper" or on TV or radio doesn't necessarily mean that it is either accurate, timely or informative.
The BBC - a news service that used to be a reliable source of news and information decades ago has, in several notable aspects - and particularly with regards to international news - become less than reliable... and that's putting it mildly. Likewise with a good number of other media outlets. One of the likely reasons is the rapidly increasing number of media outlets and communication channels. While several decades ago, there were a relatively small number of media businesses competing for ratings and the advertising revenue that flows from such ratings, the playing field has changed drastically with hundreds of media businesses chasing the same advertising revenue dollar that only a few dozen were chasing only 2 or 3 decades ago. Sensationalism is on the upswing and fact-checking of material prior to publication is suffering from increasing neglect. In some cases, reporters of world news have gone as far as staging and choreographing "news" event photo-ops - going as far as paying youth to riot on cue, just to get that "breaking news" story to the editor to meet the deadline. In other cases, such as in the Reuters "PhotoShop" incidents, news photographers have resorted to computer programs to create "news photos" of facts that never existed. Reliability and trustworthiness of "world news" is not the only victim of the commercial chase for the elusive advertising revenue. Financial news is also impacted; however, to a lesser degree. Take, for example, a recent short in the WSJ relating to the carrying costs of monthly premium payments where the conversion factor is 0.09 from annual to monthly. The accurate figure for carrying cost APR when the conversion factor is 0.09 is 18.585%. This figure is easily arrived at if one understands how insurance premiums are paid, if one realizes that as each successive monthly premium is paid a lesser amount is being carried, and if one understands that the carrying charges are compounded monthly and not annually. The writer of the WSJ short picked a figure for the APR from an insurance selling website, failing to fact check. Rather than publish a correction after being advised of the error - and the likely cause for the APR calculation error - the writer simply stated that she cites the specific site, that's all there is to it, and there likely will be no correction to the error in the story. Unfortunately for consumers, it appears that even some financial writers don't pay as much attention to fact checking and to correcting reporting errors when such a pointed out to them. E.&O.E. |
| Print Mail Friend |
| HEADLINES |
| September 03, 2010: Canadian Life Insurers Continue To Acquire US Life Insurers...Industrial Alliance Acquires Golden State Mutual... |
| September 01, 2010: US and Canadian consumers and brokers tap into savings and better life insurance values with QuotesOnTap(R) on SmartPhones and SmartTablets... |
| August 30, 2010: LIMRA Study: Individual life insurance ownership in the US drops to a 50-year low... |
| Aug 16, 2010: QuotesOnTap, North America's first and only fully self-contained independent multiple company life insurance quotation and comparison tool for the new generation of SmartPhones rapidly gains popularity and is being further enhanced... |