Check Your Facts

I received an email the other day telling the story of and reporting the death of Captain Ed Freeman, a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War who rescued a number of fallen GI’s under fire in the boonies of the jungle.

It's a good story and it’s true, but his death didn’t happen last week as the email purports. It happened on August 20^th, 2008.

The big problem with this email is its attempt to discredit the mainstream media for not covering Captain Freeman’s death saying it happened last week.

This story and email seems to emerge every so often, but uses a different celebrity death or circumstance to say that the media covered something frivolous, but not the death of hero Captain Freeman. This time it was attacking media coverage of Lindsay Lohan, Tiger Woods and the bickering in congress.

I have spent a lifetime in the media and in the dissemination of needed as well as useful information. We were never and will be never perfect in our abilities to find and convey what’s news.

As Walter Lippmann once said: “ The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free reporting and free discussion, not that it will be presented perfected or accurately in any one account.”

I have said this many times before and I will continue to say it for as long as I can post. CHECK YOUR FACTS BEFORE YOU CONVEY THEM TO THE WORLD AS TRUTH.