Journalists, reporters, and bloggers should take pride in presenting facts. I’m not even discussing whether it’s okay for outlets to take a slanted view (some think that MSNBC is liberal and others think Fox News leans conservative) or not.
When I blog, whatever I write is accurate to the best of my knowledge. While I may have a passion to present positive LGBT and marriage equality stories, I have no desire to lie or fabricate stories to bash anyone, even Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. Who?
Even when I was working as a television meteorologist, the forecast I gave was based on the data I had to go on. I didn’t build storms up for drama’s sake. And, once I started my blog last January, a scene from the disease drama, “Contagion”, played back in my mind.
Jude Law plays Alan Krumweide, a conspiracy theorist, and he’s told by Dr. Ian Sussman, played by Elliot Gould, “Blogging is not writing. It’s just graffiti with punctuation.” I laughed because it was a clever line. It also makes me strive for more when I blog.
Where am I going with this?
Last year, when Madonna released her “MDNA” album and kicked off the “MDNA Tour”, Roger Friedman, a writer for “Forbes”, was constantly bashing her. It was like a crusade. I don’t care if you like her or not and I know she doesn’t either. But seriously, report the facts and don’t be petty because she may not have given you the time of the day at a party once!
Here are the links to the two times that I wrote about Roger’s vendetta against Madonna last April:
https://anthonypeoples.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/roger-really-really-hates-madonna-btw-whos-roger/
https://anthonypeoples.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/214-million-in-the-bank-and-sales-suffer-hardly-roger-get-out-of-yellow-journalism/
And, for the record, Roger, Madonna’s “MDNA Tour” was the top-grossing tour of 2012 at $296.1 million!
This blog isn’t about that Roger, but another “Roger” named Jemuel DaSilva that has several stories posted on the examiner.com website. Before I even get to the heart of my rant, I’ll share that the company and its website have been accused of plagiarism on numerous occasions. When confronted with this, Jim Pimental, the executive editor of “The Examiner” reportedly said, “They’re blogs. They don’t get edited. We don’t give any direction to people on what to write in their blogs. And that’s standard operating procedure.” He added that his company has “a less-strict standard for accuracy and attribution in stories that appear on the Web” than other journalistic outlets.
Now that I’ve given you some background, here’s the headline of the story that prompted my rage at irresponsible “journalists” and I’m putting that in quotes because I’m using the term very loosely, i.e. I’m being sarcastic!
It started with me doing a Google search Friday morning because I knew that the North American leg of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way Ball Tour” was kicking off last night in Vancouver, British Columbia. I wanted to see if there were any spoilers leaking out about changes in the set list since I think she might be performing her soon-to-be announced first single from “Artpop”, her upcoming album. (FYI, the concert got rave reviews in “The Vancouver Sun”!)
So, I started reading the article and getting agitated at the irresponsible nature of it.
So, I decided to do my own homework. No seats at either of Lady Gaga’s Los Angeles concerts were selling for $13. The cheapest seats, nosebleed seats, were $47 the first night and $50 the second night at StubHub. And, I even checked the cost of parking and it was $25.
I also went so far as to test the theory of tickets being basically given away. I chose the January 25th concert that I’ll be seeing at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Here is the seating chart for this venue and we’re sitting in the middle of 17, which is highlighted in dark green.
Now, as I looked at StubHub, I was prepared to see people wanting to sit in the same section as us getting tickets for much less than what we paid.
In full disclosure, I got our tickets through a pre-sale offered on littlemonsters.com and I paid MUCH LESS than these two seats running for $599 on StubHub.
Once I shook my head after seeing all the misstated facts in this story, I decided to see what else this “writer” was talking about and I found this just five days earlier.
At this point, I declared that Jemuel is just another Roger with a vendetta against Lady Gaga, not Madonna. And, here’s the real kicker, he wants to go to law school!
In my closing statements, I have two things to say: I hope he learns to deal with facts before he begins his law degree AND if I run into him at the Lady Gaga concert in Las Vegas or at one of the gay bars, I hope he doesn’t beat me up for calling him out on his irresponsible journalism. And, shame on you, examiner.com for publishing untrue crap on the internet.
By the way, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way Ball Tour” was the fifth biggest tour of 2012 at $161.4 million. I doubt she’ll be hurting too much with the North American leg of the tour.
Anthony
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