Simple news and military question.

Tonight on ABC news, there was a piece on North Korea and how Osan Airbase could be a first target.

Every time the news person mentioned F-16, a picture of a F/A -18 was shown.

Is this on purpose? Is ABC new too lazy to check?

On a side note, my old unit, 621st Air Control Squadron, was mentioned.

News stories seem to always have the wrong description of military jet footage. I am more surprised when they get it right.

Personally, I'd be more worried about ABC announcing potential military targets in advance than about them showing the wrong aircraft.

well if they can't do the basic background check for the aircraft picture how much credibility does their target assessment have?

I can't say that I know but I think that they probably just don't care about that stuff. Obviously its not important to them to get the details correct or to be thoughtful of what words they are combining with images unfortunately. I do believe that the small stuff matters though, so to me it does bother me that they consistently get things like this wrong. Now if it were a worthless, shallow story about someone driving a particular type of car I can see them not getting that wrong for some reason.

The real paradox of journalism is, whenever you're informed of a topic an notice what a crappy job journalists do: How come that we think that we're seeing quality reporting about areas that we don't know so well?

Empirical evidence suggests that all reporting is a barely recognizable representation of reality.

Media? Pftt... Remember when every 'rifle' used in a shooting was an AR-15. They don't care about facts,they just want the story.

You think this would be common knowledge but it is apparent not!

Ratings are the bottom line.

One of my "pet peeves" is when a reporter calls any naval warship, regardless if it's a aircraft carrier or a destroyer or a cruiser or a frigate, a "battleship".

Osan AB has been one of the highest-priority targets in South Korea for over 60 years, ABC didn't give anyone in the DPRK any new ideas.

ABC is owned by Disney, hence, fake news! Don't waste your time by watching mainstream news anymore.

A local big weekly magazine ran yet another 'scandal' story about the Eurofighter Typhoon. Title story, multiple pages, big letters on the cover.

However, the entire frontcover shot showed a French Rafale.

That magazine must be using low paid college interns.

Yes, we should expect a high level of accuracy in our news sources. They should be able to fact check any story before it comes out.

However, there is a big difference between reporting the wrong facts about a serious event, or of someone's past, with an honest last minute mistake by the intern kid in the images department.

As other's said, it has happened in the past, and the people in this forum can tell the difference between an F-16 and F-18. I have seen the same type of mistake on other types of military vehicles, like calling and Leopard 2 an Abrams, or show T-80 when talking of a T-90 (the horror!). I even remember a WWII documentary on the old history channel that was showing what were clearly Thunderbolts in formation when talking about the virtues of the Mustang. For the majority of viewers out there, they could not tell the difference. The reporting, although not fully accurate, still conveys the same basic facts.

Anybody can write to ABC and ask them to clarify the error (they will probably add it as a small note on the credits of their next edition). However if this was something big (like naming the wrong accused on a murder), external fact checkers and other news sources would press them to rectify on the air ASAP. Sure, it is not instant, but even in the wake of the media controlled society, there are still ways to make facts come out to light.

If they end up not being the facts you favor...well, that's another matter...

Hell, my local news still does stories about my base and shows stock footage of our long gone F-16s. We've had A-10s since 2010...and that's when our F-16s left. The news station is only 15 minutes away from the base...come on out and get some new A-10 footage...lol.

Oh, and Panzer, our news station is probably 50% college interns...lol.

Bib makes some really good points in his post. The vast majority of the general public doesn't notice these mistakes concerning military hardware. It's mostly just us SimHQ geeks who notice stuff like that.

I think I saw the same piece and they showed a F-18 Growler, now seeing Osan is a frontline AF base I'm assuming they're just based there to help? I only see the other base in SK being Kunsan?

oh and the media is a joke, our local paper called the 493rd FS from Lakenheath Grim Reaper Jets... The squadron is known as the Grip Reaps, they fly F-15 Eagles...

http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20170404/grim-reaper-fighter-jets-at-pease

That was the same realization I came to a while ago. Whether it's military stuff or IT stuff, fields in which I have some familiarity, I am constantly finding blatant errors, some of which go to the core of the story, and it hit me that I'm sure it's not just those two fields where "reporters" get it wrong. I end up researching just about any news story I have an interest in to make sure I get accurate information about it.

Many years ago, when the Michelangelo virus first hit, I was working at a computer store and got interviewed on camera by the local news. Throughout the whole interview, my attitude was, "it's not that much of a risk for most people, and there are ways to mitigate it for free." They kept asking me questions, and in different ways, and then when it aired, it was like I was saying "We're all doomed! Doomed I say!"

They asked specific questions to get the soundbites they wanted to make the story sound significant, and then cut it together to give that impression. They didn't interview me to get information, they interviewed me to get an "expert" to support the drama they wanted to sell. I haven't trusted the news since. I think all news stories should have a banner across the bottom of the screen that says "This report is based on actual events," because while what they say might not be false, it certainly could be highly selective and manipulated.

+1,000 Arthonon

I remember during the Y2K stuff, we had all the local news station trucks outside our Data Center for weeks. Everyday when we would walk in to work, there where cameras in our face and some reporter trying to get you to give him a sound byte. We where under strict orders not to say one word to them, for the very reason Arthonon pointed out. They were relentless and quite annoying in their attempts to get you to say anything.

Sensationalism = ratings = more ad revenue.

Every APC is a tank.

I think the worst was during Desert Storm when we heard a live report that started with "As the troops are waiting for the sun to come up..."

As we looked at each other with amazement at our ability to do so in sunshine.

So VERY true.

In the last week was reading an article about the Spitfire and 109. Besides getting the armament wrong for the 109, a photo of a Merlin powered 109 was shown.