Panel Urges Resposible Y2k Reporting

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Panel Urges Responsible Y2K Reporting

By David McGuire, Newsbytes WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 17 Sep 1999, 2:48 PM CST

Print, broadcast and Internet media outlets bear a heavy responsibility to avoid Y2K alarmism and to provide balanced coverage of the upcoming date rollover, a panel of journalists, industry leaders and federal authorities said today.

"I continue to believe that (most) people (have common sense)," John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion said at today's meeting. "If we get the public the appropriate information, they will respond appropriately."

Koskinen participated in a panel on media coverage of the date rollover at a Y2K Summit sponsored by a handful of media trade groups.

But while journalists on the panel echoed the need for responsible coverage, they warned that a failure on the part of industry leaders to be forthcoming with information about their Y2K-remidation activities will undoubtedly result in more dire press reports.

Journalists should "insist on disclosure, and if (they) don't get it, make non-disclosure the story," San Jose Mercury News Assistant Managing Editor Jonathan Krim said at the meeting.

Industry leaders, for their part, urged journalists to report what they say are the positive Y2K developments in their respective sectors.

Representatives from the financial and aviation sectors said that their greatest Y2K concerns now stem not from the dangers associated with equipment failures, but rather from public overreaction to Y2K.

The financial and aviation sectors are reported to be among those best prepared to weather the date rollover.

In the financial sector particularly, however, significant concerns remain about whether the public will react to the upcoming rollover by making runs on banks.

The Federal Reserve has announced that it will print billions of dollars in additional currency to guard against increased cash demands.

Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), September 17, 1999

Answers

Panel Urges Responsible Y2K Reporting

It depends on your definition of responsible.

Here's a nifty quote:

"We need to be able to manage the MEDIA, to the best of our ability."

(Willian Bone, Vice President, NASD - a committee member on the program)

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 17, 1999.


The press was originally "responsible" about things like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Iran-Contra, and Waco. "Truthful" comes later, when the statute of limitations expires.

We don't have a straight-up government controlled press, then we would know how to react. Instead, we have a media censored by its corporate masters- the same ones who have the most to lose from public overreaction such as taking money out of the bank.

Rather than this type of dubiuos 'responsible' reporting, what the people need is complete and thorough reporting of y2k and other things as well. Unfortunately, the more reporters start to dig, the less responsible they become.

Remember the reporter who broke the old CIA-coke-guns-contra story in the San Jose Mercury News in 1997? (Dark Alliance was the series title.) Gary something..... I can't recall. At any rate, even though his story was true and confirmed by the Kerry Commission hearings in Congress in 1987- and was therefore an old, verified story- his 'irresponsibility' in bringing it up again cost him his job. The New York Times weighed in on him in a story of their own- ignoring the Kerry commission and all of the other evidence that supported the story that was already in the public record.

The CIA has drug connections that go back to the OSS days and their work with the Mafia and heroin smuggling. The drug underworld is the perfect soup of untraceable money in vast sums, dark connections, and able personnel for dirty work. No intelligence service can resist! But the CIA has been involved up to the neck for decades. Everyone who wants to do even a little research can find this out, yet saying it outright in a national newspaper is irresponsible, and trashes your career as a journalist.

I predict- and I make few predictions- that the y2k story will be of that same mold.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), September 17, 1999.


Gary North: responsible reporting.

Koskinen: irresponsible reporting.

That covers it.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), September 17, 1999.


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