I have always considered that most news related to outrageous events to be fake. Honestly though, I would be surprised if a journalist had the nerve to lie about an article such as something like a fatal car accident, or a mass murder. Then again most journalists wouldn't be hired if their employer had heard word of them lying in articles, so that kind of keeps it balanced. Although that doesn't mean every article is the truth, most is, but others may be written by bias, corrupt or untruthful reporters.
I am completely shocked with the article "Jimmys World". I find this article horrible and rude, for someone to stoop this low in their career deserves to lose her job. She created a fake story just to gain attention and kept it going until it got out of control which makes her look even worse. If she had of just took the time, and did the work none of this would of ever happened. It shocks me the most because their are some kids in the world that are actually suffering that don't get the help they need. The second article "The Wafer Story" was actually pretty amusing to me. I found that it was kind of one of those stories where he doesn't mean to hurt anyone in the process but the writer wants to get a few laughs. The fact that he wrote about the Prime Minister stealing communion bread was a bad direction, because he draws major attention to Canada and also Canadian Christians. Many people take a lot of offense when it comes to religion and he probably should have thought it over before actually posting it.
Yes, I completely agree with Shafer's statement. I could sit down and write a completely fake article on anything within twenty minutes, and I am by no means a great journalist. Liars really don't have a talent in making up stories, because once everyone finds out it is a lie they lose all respect for the journalist. I believe that colleges and universities don't really have to do a better job, because I am sure the content they teach is spot on, but I believe that they should definitely keep a closer eye on student papers/essays to see if they can catch any liars. If the liars are found, they should be penalized some way in the course, which may teach them to work a little more harder in the course and open their eyes to the fact that they plan on their career revolving around journalism.
I think that the ombudsman certainly helps when it comes to journalism because they would be someone you could go to about any complaints with articles, and they wouldn't be as biased as the author of the article. Sometimes it is better to get someone who sees objectively to help in a situation before you charge head on into something that may backfire. Also they could help in calling out the author on their lies, bad reporting or offensive content, which would drastically improve a lot of peoples thoughts on these certain types of articles.
