You’re right, that’s totally fine - if that were the case. As it happens, you seem to be misinterpreting/misunderstanding my posts. I don’t have an opinion one way or another about 60 Minutes, and nowhere in my responses have I offered one.

All that happened was that I saw you say that 14 issues “seems kind of high”, I got curious about how that compared with the total number of episodes aired, did the math and then shared the data. At best, my response was a suggestion that your “kind of high” claim didn’t line up with the data available to us at the time. Your subsequent responses, however, flagged some things for me; while you suggest that 60 Minutes has “low journalistic integrity/information quality”, your responses seem to demonstrate the same lack of attention to detail.

First, your initial post demonstrated that you simply counted Wiki sub-headings instead of reading about them to see if they actually counted as a “controversy” relevant to your point. One of the controversies listed was limited to internal sexual assault issues and, as far as we are aware, doesn’t have anything to do with on-air controversies or failures of journalistic integrity. I also mentioned that you should better understand the nuance of some of the issues because for instance, in the case of “Alar”, the issue was that the program highlighted a concern around a chemical used on apples, and sales of apples plummeted. The EPA ended up banning the same chemical the year that the program aired, so beyond apple sales plummeting there wasn’t much “controversy” that I can see. Because this specific comment chain was about the program “making stuff up, lying about it, or peddling other peoples lies”, I’m not sure whether or not the Alar/apple “controversy” actually falls in line with that specific concern.

In addition, your last response says that, “if you read it you would see some of these controversies spanned multiple episodes”, but that’s a lie - none of the controversies “spanned multiple episodes”. Let’s review:

- “Unintended Acceleration” aired on November 23, 1986, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Alar” aired in February 1989, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Werner Erhard” aired on March 3, 1991, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Brown & Williamson” aired in 1995, no mention of multiple episodes

- “US Customs Service” aired in 1997, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Kennewick Man” aired on October 25, 1998, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Viacom/CBS Cross-Promotion”, accusations of the program promoting books/films/interviews of value to sister company Viacom, but doesn’t mention “making stuff up, lying about it,” etc. nor does it say that those spanned multiple episodes

- “Killian Documents Controversy” aired on September 8, 2004, neither the 60 Minutes wiki page nor the linked Killian controversy page mentions multiple episodes

- “Benghazi Report” aired on October 27, 2013, no mention of multiple episodes

- “NSA Report” aired on December 15, 2013, no mention of multiple episodes

- “Tesla Automaker Report” aired on March 23, 2014, no mention of multiple episodes

Ultimately, I don’t have a problem with the fact that you don’t think 60 Minutes meets your standard of journalistic integrity. I also don’t have an opinion about the program myself. One doesn’t have to be defending something, or showing support for it, if they’re simply pointing out that data might not jive with a claim and that there is more nuance involved than someone seems to suggest.

My concern simply lies in the fact that you’re berating an outlet for not doing their due diligence with regard to the facts at hand, when you yourself are quite guilty of doing the same thing, continuing even after it was suggested that you hadn’t read the data you were using to back up your claims. You’re right, it’s not a pissing contest; I believe people should thoroughly read through anything they use to back up their claims, and it sounds like you have a different opinion.

And that’s fine.