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Known liars

T

The Phazer

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 31, 2007
3,031
1,021
London, UK
Given today's latest debacle, would it be possible for Macrumors to start prefixing The Sun and the Daily Mail with something that reflects the fact they are some of the least trustworthy sources in existence?

I would suggest "according to well established liars and fantasists The Sun and the Daily Mail..."

This isn't a joke thread, I'm completely serious.
 
The Phazer said:
Given today's latest debacle, would it be possible for Macrumors to start prefixing The Sun and the Daily Mail with something that reflects the fact they are some of the least trustworthy sources in existence?

I would suggest "according to well established liars and fantasists The Sun and the Daily Mail..."

This isn't a joke thread, I'm completely serious.
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I can understand your point and empathize with you, however I seriously doubt that MacRumors wishes to get in the business of defamation of other news outlets, at least in the fashion you quote here.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I can understand your point and empathize with you, however I seriously doubt that MacRumors wishes to get in the business of defamation of other news outlets, at least in the fashion you quote here.
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Agreed... Its up to us members to make this decision, not MR's job to decide for us.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I can understand your point and empathize with you, however I seriously doubt that MacRumors wishes to get in the business of defamation of other news outlets, at least in the fashion you quote here.
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Truth is an absolute defense against defamation under UK law.
 
The Phazer said:
Truth is an absolute defense against defamation under UK law.
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I don't know what the laws regarding that are about in the UK or the US, but MacRumors is based in the US (I'm sure you know that). Regardless of that, it's in poor taste to publicly bad-mouth other people, companies or outlets. If those outlets are known to publish inaccurate articles, eventually folks will catch on and either ignore them or read them with a grain of salt.

I'm sure MacRumors will take the high road and not take your suggestion in this case and implement it. Hopefully though, we won't see many more stories that came from the aforementioned sites again.
 
Look up above.

The site is called "MacRumors"

Look at the link below:
http://m.dictionary.com/d/?q=rumor&o=0&l=dir

It's not up to someone here to censor sources just because they might not promote Apple. Thats more like something Steve Jobs would do if he thought he could get away with it.

If it circulates publicly, It should be posted here as usual.

Somehow I trust others to decide for themselves.
 
Take a deep breath, we'll get through this together.

Screen shot 2012-09-03 at 6.04.06 PM.png

See, if you read the first sentence you can judge for yourself if the article is worth reading or not. Believe it or not, just because you don't want to read articles from some sources (which are always listed in the first or second sentence) doesn't mean others don't.
 
ixodes said:
Look up above.

The site is called "MacRumors"

Look at the link below:
http://m.dictionary.com/d/?q=rumor&o=0&l=dir

It's not up to someone here to censor sources just because they might not promote Apple. Thats more like something Steve Jobs would do if he thought he could get away with it.

If it circulates publicly, It should be posted here as usual.

Somehow I trust others to decide for themselves.
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Lots of digitimes rumors used to be prefixed with the something like "The unreliable source..." or postfixed with something like "...but since this is from Digitimes, whos reputation for rumors has not been accurate lately, this may not happen".

There's no reason we can't do that for the Daily Mail or The Sun, too.
 
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thejadedmonkey said:
Lots of digitimes rumors used to be prefixed with the something like "The unreliable source..." or postfixed with something like "...but since this is from Digitimes, whos reputation for rumors has not good accurate lately, this may not happen".

There's no reason we can't do that for the Daily Mail or The Sun, too.
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Exactly. Almost all MacRumors stories prefix the source with a statement about their reliability.

I don't see why the same isn't done for these two publications, given their reliability is lower than The Onion.
 
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SandboxGeneral said:
Regardless of that, it's in poor taste to publicly bad-mouth other people, companies or outlets. If those outlets are known to publish inaccurate articles, eventually folks will catch on and either ignore them or read them with a grain of salt.
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The thing is these newspapers are known liars. I can categorically say that without any worry of the newspaper pursuing me for libel. They have been caught before, and will do so again.

The problem is a UK-USA inverse of the media. The US has straight now the middle newspapers (National Inquirer excepted) but the TV news is extemely tabloid. In the UK it's the other way about, TV news is very neutral and factual (even the Murdoch owned Sky News is not that bad) but the tabloid newspapers are, well, the equivalent of Fox News.

If Fox News had ran with the Willis story would MacRumors have published it? So it's just a warning, take the UK written press with a pinch of salt, especially when it comes to The Sun and the Daily Mail.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Lots of digitimes rumors used to be prefixed with the something like "The unreliable source..." or postfixed with something like "...but since this is from Digitimes, whos reputation for rumors has not good accurate lately, this may not happen".

There's no reason we can't do that for the Daily Mail or The Sun, too.
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Respectfully, I'm not arguing or challenging you, especially since I'm in near agreement. Yet it's important not to start something that could be abused.

In the case of the Daily Mail & The Sun, those of us who are well read, know perfectly well what the agenda of these two are. Yet in other cases involving a variety of publications / web sites it may not be so clear.

That's my take on it. :)
 
Fuzzy14 said:
The thing is these newspapers are known liars. I can categorically say that without any worry of the newspaper pursuing me for libel. They have been caught before, and will do so again.

The problem is a UK-USA inverse of the media. The US has straight now the middle newspapers (National Inquirer excepted) but the TV news is extemely tabloid. In the UK it's the other way about, TV news is very neutral and factual (even the Murdoch owned Sky News is not that bad) but the tabloid newspapers are, well, the equivalent of Fox News.

If Fox News had ran with the Willis story would MacRumors have published it? So it's just a warning, take the UK written press with a pinch of salt, especially when it comes to The Sun and the Daily Mail.
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I really wasn't intending to go into the legality of bashing, but leaned more towards a certain level of professionalism exuded by MacRumors. They can come up with creative ways to call into question a source, such as thejadedmonkey pointed out and not how the OP stated it.
 
the editor should admit his mistake writing this dumb article and delete it off the front page to spare any further embarrassment
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I really wasn't intending to go into the legality of bashing, but leaned more towards a certain level of professionalism exuded by MacRumors. They can come up with creative ways to call into question a source, such as thejadedmonkey pointed out and not how the OP stated it.
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Yes, I wasn't sure of your location so didn't know if you knew of these titles or their reputation. It would perhaps be an idea if MacRumors could keep running tabs on rumour accuracy and present a score (marks out of ten or a percentage) against a title each time it is mentioned to allow the reader to make up their own mind?

For example:
9-to-5-mac (56%) reports that....
The Sun (0%) reports that....
 
Fuzzy14 said:
Yes, I wasn't sure of your location so didn't know if you knew of these titles or their reputation. It would perhaps be an idea if MacRumors could keep running tabs on rumour accuracy and present a score (marks out of ten or a percentage) against a title each time it is mentioned to allow the reader to make up their own mind?

For example:
9-to-5-mac (56%) reports that....
The Sun (0%) reports that....
Click to expand...

That would certainly be an idea and something the admin's and writers would need to take up.
 
MR front page quality control has been slipping a lot lately. From badly written articles to just bad content. It seems page views have won out over quality.
 
Comeagain? said:
You'll have to be more specific...it's a rumor site. Lot's of things that are posted aren't true.
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I dont think thats the point here. MacRumors reported it as FACT...they didnt put anything along the lines of 'two unreliable news sources are reporting...' - which would be the correct thing to do given that BOTH newspapers make up pretty much all their headlines.

Sorry, but MacRumors may as well be making up their own headlines too if they are going to pedel complete tosh as news.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
I can understand your point and empathize with you, however I seriously doubt that MacRumors wishes to get in the business of defamation of other news outlets, at least in the fashion you quote here.
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I agree. There is no reason to engage in defamation and why they'd want to put themselves at risk would be baffling to me.
 
jessica. said:
I agree. There is no reason to engage in defamation and why they'd want to put themselves at risk would be baffling to me.
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Why post the story in the first place before they researched it further.
 
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