"Journalism as a public service, my ass."

Babble on.

Bruce Rolston at Flit thoroughly exposes some sensationalist reporting this week:

The latest CP 'dirty bomb' scare story isn't just bad because the original study it's based on is not linked to by either the newspaper or the DRDC's own website, allowing people to make up their own minds from the source.

It's not just irresponsible because the report seems basically a rehash of the Federation of American Scientists' previous effort in this genre.

The real problem is that in covering a report that will undoubtedly have said that the disruption and injury will be the real cause of damage, it does nothing to alleviate that same panic. Journalism as a public service, my ass. [Babbler's emphasis]

That journalists so often refuse to acknowledge that they not only observe circumstances, but that their observations often change those circumstances, is willful blindness. That many of them refuse to consider the consequences of those changes in determining what they report and how they report it verges on negligence.