Three strikes you’re off the air or out of the news for seven days or more.

That should be the new rule for all those in the media business, including political pundits.  Whenever they report something that ends up being false information or pass along rumors without facts to back them up.

The FEC should force the ‘television or radio show, magazine or newspaper’ that made the mistake, to be taken off the air or out of print for at least seven days or a month depending the type of media, whenever they pass along bad information.

How many times have we been given information from so-called experts in the news, only to be told later it wasn’t true or completely true?

Enough already!

If we wrote or said something that wasn’t true about someone, that person could sue us.  The media it seems is getting blanket immunity for doing just that. 

It all started, it seems, with the Clinton administration.  Lies and rumors were repeated constantly on the news.  Along came the Bush administration and the media completely ignored their jobs and allow the administration to take us to unprovoked war in Iraq.  It doesn’t matter that American’s at the time supported President Bush.  What matters is, the media and press report the ‘facts’ – they failed to do this.

To this day they continue to report rumors.  They don’t bother getting two or more sources before reporting a story. 

The story about Barack Obama turning down an offer from a kid to hand bump is a pure example.  The story that Obama doesn’t put his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance was also ignored and allowed to spread. 

These stories, while minor in content, can actually hurt the candidate.

Just this week I watched a video on CSPAN of Peter Hart (pollster) interviewing a voter's focus group of the general public on all the presidential candidates and the issues of today.  There were three men that actually believed Barack Obama refused to put his hand over his heart during the Pledge.  They also believed Obama was a Muslim.  The pollster didn’t bother correcting the men’s views.

Now if the media were doing their jobs, and I mean all of them, including your local stations and newspapers, Americans’ would know the above three accusations were false. 

It took almost a full day for the story about the fist bump to be debunked.  By that time of course, I’m sure another thousand people turned against Obama, politically, for being so rude to that child – missing the stories that it was a false report.

Three strikes you are out for at least 7 days or a month depending on what kind of media your work in – period.

Without having to face consequences, how else will they learn to ‘trust but verify’ their stories?