Should journalists be punished for lying to the public ?

They were proven forgeries, not falsehoods.

Nothing in their content has ever been seriously disputed, and much of their content positively supported by eyewitness accounts as well as circumstance.

Last I heard there was still a standing reward for eyewitness or circumstantial evidence contradicting the eyewitness and circumstantial accounts supported by those forgeries.

If there were a professional body, like the Bar Association, membership in it would suffice.

Given the US Constitution, I see no way to set one up with real power, though.

 

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That's sufficient by the standards of today's dialectic.

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No point in setting the bar that low - reality basing is not that difficult.

 

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Of course they should be punished as it is a public mischief .
I do not see politicians being punished for their lies .
Where did you see a politician punished for his lies ?.

 

They should be punished, their reputation as respectable journalists should suffer. They should suffer public humiliation and ridicule. Anything more would be a violation of free speach, apart from slander and defamation lawsuits.

 

How about just shooting them?

 

actually there is a good argument that some people dont have a right to "free speach" in specific cirumstances. For instance lying under oath isnt protected as free speach and is punishable by inprisionment, the same with a doctor lying to a pt about a treatment. It could be argued that journilists and pollies have a responcability to tell the truth in there proffessional duties as well

 

That would not go over well with a lot of the conservative right in this country...Republicans.

 

so?

i dont exclude anyone in this. for instance howard KNEW he was lying to the parliment and to the people about the children overboard saga and yet this didnt come out until AFTER the election and then what did he do? he blamed the navy personal for "missleading" him. I dont know what the punishment should have been for that, maybe his personal assests sold to pay for a new election campain and the public cost of campaining for labor, the greens ect (no public money for the libs of course)

 

This is a reasonable suggestion, frankly. It seems entirely fair and correct, and I can think of no better.

 

Interseting thread. Who contends that journalism is a profession? Is politics one too? ...not. Journalists thrive like academics on publishings, If exposed they do more damage to themselves than anything that can be meted by us. In many circumstances they are simply encouraged by their editors in any part of the world.

 

If Fox News "lied" about the stories they report on, they would have been the same boat Dan Rather is in right now. The simple fact of the matter is left wing radicals absolutely HATE the fact Fox gives BOTH points of views on topics, which liberal news media organizations have failed to do for decades up until Fox started.
Yes, Fox has a right-wing slant in their OPINIONS and COMMENTARY, but the stories they report on are factual. If Fox "lied" about the stories they report on, they'd suffer the same fate Dan Rather did, if not worse.
The fact that leftists go so ape shit over Fox News for merely showing BOTH sides of stories shows how radical some of them are.

 

True, but Journalists should be accountable to the public nonetheless.

 

I am not going to reargue this point, but Rather did not lie. He failed to get the Killian documents properly authenticated. Fox News spins the news all the time. If you consider the 30 second breaks at the to of every hour as the NEWs then you may have a point. But Fox News is a 24 hour news channel. But the rest of the time is ad and Republican spin.