Former Military Personnel Claim Aliens Are Monitoring Our Nukes
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters "Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former US Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality." I won't worry until Gort shows up.
http://www.ufohqs.com/?page_id=108
Fact checking has one single purpose: it means that the newspaper can't be sued for printing falsehoods.
There's more to it than that. As journalism became a profession in the middle of the last century, news organizations would actually compete to be seen as the most factual and least biased sources of news. I know, it sounds incredible, but there were actual market forces at work compelling news organizations to check facts before publishing them.
The impact of libel law on news organizations has remained relatively constant, even in the era of Fox News and The Random Angry Blogger. While many "news" organizations are happy to cannibalize the profession of journalism in their race for the bottom, there are still media outlets both old and new that are holding on to journalistic ethics because they know there are still readers who will pay for the privilege of reading news that has actual facts in it.
Tilting libel in favor of plaintiffs would surely create more fact-checking, but I wouldn't bet on that happening any time in the near future. The Roberts Court is very pro-First Amendment. They love it so much they'll guarantee it for entities like corporations that aren't even human.
I wouldn't be surprised, though, if in a decade we find a small, robust core of truly journalistic organizations thriving in the face of widespread devaluation of news. They'll survive not because of the law, but because there will always be people who value straightforward reporting and will pay for it (not necessarily directly, but in some fashion).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ