Only the Jester...

Edward R. Murrow is alive and well in the 21st century. This is his disguise.

Not Without My Tragically Dead Nonexistent Girlfriend

By Dan Hagen

I want to thank Notre Dame for giving me a great classroom example today in Manti Te'o.

Last week, I was telling newswriting students about the necessity of double-checking your facts, and triple-checking your facts in an obit. The Te'o story shows the criminal incompetence of sports reporting in the American corporate news media. They ran tons of silly sob sister shit about a woman who NEVER EXISTED.

Corporate news operations employee hundreds of people, and they simply TAKE SOME FOOTBALL PLAYER'S WORD that a person is DEAD? Bullshit.

Nor do I believe Notre Dame's explanation for one single damn minute. Yeah, Te'o was the "victim of a hoax." Sure. Right. He's one of those many people we know whose great, true love is a person he has never met.

And the story is STILL being reported incompetently this morning. The corporate media is simply swallowing and regurgitating Notre Dame's self-serving lies.

If even the most obvious, easily verified story in the corporate news media is a blatant lie, we must ask what OTHER corporate media stories are also based on lies?

As John Kass advised, “When your girlfriend dying of leukemia after suffering a car crash tells you she loves you — even if it might help you win the Heisman Trophy — you check it out.”

I do have a suggested Lifetime movie title for Te’o, though: "Not Without My Tragically Dead Nonexistent Girlfriend."

What Journalism Should Be

Smartphones aren’t cheap in the U.S., but they cost a great deal more in Indonesia, where many men, women and children die digging the tin that must go in them. My old friend Cam Simpson, the London-based investigative correspondent for Bloomberg News, exposes all that here. His writing is specific, vivid and unarguable in its factual reporting. This is what 21st century journalism could be and should be and so rarely is.