ABC News faked Toyota acceleration coverage

[Dave W]

Part 1

Part 2

This isn't the first time this has happened, I remember ABC faked Ford collision fires in the 70s and then there was the Dateline NBC scandal in the early 90s with faked Chevy/GMC truck gas tank fires. IIRC in both cases they used hidden incendiary devices.

Dirtbags. 

[OldManC]

How pathetic is it that Gawker, a celebrity gossip site, is doing more dependable news coverage than ABC news? Damn... 

[Dave W]

Sort of like the National Enquirer and the John Edwards story.

[lowend1]

And in a related story...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gc_pIFqke7WxQovY3MnhcyIYiLgwD9EAS1L00

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Corporate news: you get what they pay for. A free press is the only organization called for by the Constitution that is almost completely in private hands. That needs to change.

[uwe]

Toyota should sue their butts off.

[Dave W]

This story doesn't surprise me at all.

Most bureaucracies wind up in bed with the parties they are supposed to be regulating.

[Denis]

This story doesn't surprise me at all.

Most bureaucracies wind up in bed with the parties they are supposed to be regulating.

That crap ought to be illegal.

[Pilgrim]

I don't get why the reporter and producer don't understand the problem.

If they don't show the REAL video, shot in REAL time and of the REAL event, they destroy their own credibility.  They can tell us that the effect and behavior were the same, but no one is going to believe them when they don't show the real thing.

College kids doing news understand this!  They certainly should.  

I don't think they tried to present something that wasn't true - I DO think they destroyed their own credibility.  News is not a movie - you DO NOT get to shoot the event four times and choose a shot for the story that doesn't go with the real event.

[uwe]

Reminds me of biology class way back where we did a photosynthsis experiment which failed three times in a row until the teacher asked us mildly blushed and irritated that we should report (for a biology test, no less) "what we saw" as if the experiment had worked.  So I wrote

"Most unfortunately, all three tests could not prove the photosynthesis theory at all, in fact they proved nothing and nurtured doubts about the whole thing. We were quite frankly left in the dark as to how light is transformed into something else. However, our dear biology teacher went out of his way to assure us most credibly that had one out of three experiments worked we would have witnessed something which supposedly should have scientifically proven something else which I am to write about here. As a result, what we did not see is supposed to scientifically evidence the following ...".

He thought that was hilarious and told me that while he found my photosynthesis analysis lacking, I should eventially "take up an occupation involving language". How prophetic.