[boots]

The recent troubles at the New York Times (especially Jayson Blaire) have been cited on the boards a couple of times recently to dismiss media reports of this or that issue. That brings up a couple of questions.

1) (for the Poll) Do you trust any media, or do you think the same thing is going on everywhere and only the NYT had the bad fortune of being caught?

2) How do you feel about "anonymous sources" after the recent problems of a NYT writer quiting over this issue?

3) What would make you trust (insert media outlet here) again?

[voodoo]

I never did like the NYT for some reason (I only read the online version, I am not judging the dead-tree version)

I read the LAT online regularily. They are pretty damn good IMO.

[Timo]

I trust media outlets only in comparison and cooroboration with other outlets.

What they don't cover is also often as interesting as how well they do cover what they chose to cover.

[davesimondotcom]

Goes back to what I always say - apparent or not, there is always bias. So you must get your news from various sources and then make up your own mind what the truth is.

[Timo]

Originally posted by davesimondotcom:
Goes back to what I always say - apparent or not, there is always bias. So you must get your news from various sources and then make up your own mind what the truth is.

yep. Although, we cannot entertain all sources equally, so implicitly there are some sources we trust more than others, or there are some sources we hold to a higher standard than others. They have bias, we have bias.

It's like a bias marketplace.

[nvaughan3]

interesting this subject came up the same day a fantastic column from TIME showed up on my doorstep.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/p...455835,00.html

Don't Blame It on Jayson Blair
Big media's big problem isn't plagiarism — it's a passion deficit

Sunday, Jun. 01, 2003
When the New York Times's Jayson Blair was busted for plagiarism and fabrications — and then its star writer Rick Bragg was suspended and quit after claiming an intern's reporting as his own — the media lit up like the switchboard of a gossipy small town. Reporters investigated reporters. The Times newsroom erupted in finger pointing. Journalism professors raised themselves up on their suede elbow patches to tsk-tsk. Newspapers worriedly reviewed their policies. Collectively, we agonized: Will the public ever trust us again?

Don't sweat it! the public replied. We didn't trust you in the first place! That's the message, anyway, of a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll released last week. It found that only 36% of those polled believe the media generally "get the facts straight." But that number had not plummeted since the Blair scandal; in February, it was 39%, and in December 2000 it was 32%. In fact, only one-third of the people surveyed had even followed the Blair story.

The numbers may help explain why so few people had complained after Blair made up stuff about them — they assumed that that is just what reporters do. And the figures hint at why journalists are more fascinated by perfidy among our own than civilians are. Villains like Blair and their cut-and-dried crimes — lies bad, truth good! — are easier to deal with than the systemic problems with journalism that people really care about.

Journalists are nerdily literal-minded folk. When we say, "Does the public trust us?", we mean, "Do they think we're accurate?" The public has a more sophisticated definition of trust: Do the media respect me? Do they know how people like me live? Do they put news principles over the bottom line? Are they elitists, poseurs, sell-outs? Journalists think trust equals accuracy. But it's about much more: passion, genuineness, integrity.

In March, Gallup asked Americans to rate coverage of the Iraq war; 79% said it was good or excellent. But 38% said it was often inaccurate. Which means a fair chunk of the audience thought the media did a good, but inaccurate, job. Maybe they liked the media's wartime flag waving, were happy to see the media focus on a serious issue or understood that facts are always hard to pin down in war. Either way, the message is that truth is about more than facts. If people hate the media, it's not because Blair invented a tobacco field by Private First Class Jessica Lynch's house.

Why, then? Take your pick. There are the perennial charges of bias, which grow louder the more bitterly split the electorate gets. But there's also the problem that many big-media journalists are now cautious, well-paid conformists distant from their audiences and more responsive to urban elites, powerful people and megacorporations — especially the ones they work for. Hence the bland news anchors who verge on self-parody; magazines so commercial they're practically catalogs; timid pack journalism (We love dotcoms too! I mean, we never believed in them either!); local newscasts shilling for their corporate parents ("Up next: the hottest Survivor finale parties! Plus, the rest of the news!"); saturation coverage of trials-of-the-minute and movies we know will be lousy but will have big opening weekends. Yes, people watch and buy all this stuff. That doesn't mean they respect it. They see a profession that acts excited about a lot — Laci Peterson, The Matrix Reloaded, political horse races — but cares about nothing.

So it's not surprising that we've seen the runaway success of Fox News, which cares with a vengeance. Fox too is a big corporate entity that commits plenty of the above sins. But love it or hate it, Fox News also shows a passion for its job. Its pugilism and its high-decibel hosts' badly masked rightward leanings are journalistically incorrect, but they're not marketing (well, not just marketing). If Fox's political convictions often override its journalistic ones, at least it has convictions. Whereas when MSNBC slapped the flag onscreen and CNN hired Connie Chung for a shot of Fox-y tabloidism, it looked like the insincere opportunism that it was. Ironically, CNN brands itself the "most trusted name in news," and it has a deeper news bench than Fox. But CNN isn't the most watched name in news, perhaps because its definition of trust — "trust us to get accurate scoops" — is not the public's only priority.

The same goes for all of us. We can root out every error, every plagiarist, every bias — but it won't do any good if we replace them with a gutless inoffensiveness. We've spent a month being worried that our readers and viewers hate us because they think we're liars. Relax, brethren; they don't. They hate us because they think we're phonies.

[xi_hyperon]

I'm a naturally skeptical person, so a certain level of distrust of the media is consistent with my outlook on things. It's not just bias on the part of the media that feeds my skepticsm, but the feeling that journalists sometimes don't know what the hell they are talking about. Perhaps it's due to sketchy research on their part, or to the fact that they must fit their reports in a tiny window of time, and therefore sacrifice what may be details crucial to getting across an accurate and complete picture. $0.02

I don't know what was going on in J. Blair's head, but I hope that was an isolated incident.

[Nicko]

I equate trustworthiness of the media with the perspectives that get discussed and analysed in any particular organization. I am wary of any media outlet that tends to focus on only one side of an issue, or neglects some aspects of a story while emphasizing others.

Often this means that one must read, compare and contrast 5-10 sources of a single story before any semblance of the truth can be had.

[zigzag]

I would've added another choice: I was always selective, so this one incident hasn't changed my attitude towards the NYT or any other paper. Biases aside, in terms of quality of writing, it's still leagues above most other papers.

Actually, I'm personally acquainted with a minor incident that happened many years ago between two friends of mine that also involved the NYT. One was writing a special story for the Times (and gunning for a full-time job), and the other was an interviewee. By the time the interviewee's words reached print, they completely misrepresented the interviewee's actual views. The words weren't literally misquoted, just arranged in such a way that their meaning changed and gave an extra edge to an otherwise unremarkable story (I'm familiar with other such incidents - that one just happened to involve the NYT. The problem is neither new to the Times nor unique to the Times nor to liberal papers or conservative papers).

As I see it, the problem is that even when a reporter/outlet gets the facts straight (often a difficult task in the first place), the reporter's ego/ambition inevitably comes into play. Reporters want their stories to be interesting even if the subject matter isn't interesting, so they use all sorts of devices, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to embellish the basic facts. Add to that the outlet's natural desire to increase sales, and you have inherent problems.

I was just now reading a law-related story on the web. In the middle, the reporter says "Judge ________, who wore a floppy yellow bow-tie under his robes, . . . ". It was distracting and added nothing to the story apart from the fact that the reporter thought it made the story more interesting and/or made the reporter sound more literary etc. It didn't help that the important facts behind the story were presented in a rather backwards fashion. How many times a week do I have to wade through a bunch of flowery language at the beginning of a story to get to the basic facts? Ugh.

In other words, almost every reporter seems to be a frustrated novelist, and IMO it interferes with rather than enhances their work. And it's mostly in the embellishments that their political and cultural biases come into play. I desperately wish that there was more adherence to the simple who-what-where-why principle, and that the flowery stuff was saved for the editorial page and human interest section (which, years ago, was known as the "women's section" ).

I'm not trying to bash reporters - they're trying to earn a living, and every profession I know of has built-in ethical conflicts to deal with. I'm just saying that whatever media source one relies on, one has to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism. The Jason Blair story highlights that fact, but doesn't fundamentally change it IMO.

[boots]

The shît keeps on rolling at the NYT:

Top New York Times editors quit

It's about time someone in the editorial suite took some responsibility.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by boots:
The shît keeps on rolling at the NYT:

Top New York Times editors quit

It's about time someone in the editorial suite took some responsibility.

well, I doubt that was truly voluntary. More likely, because of their position, they were offered the opportunity to resign rather than be fired.
Not the same thing exactly as "taking" responsibility.

FWIW, I don't think the Blair case is representative, though I'm sure there are others like him in the profession, just like there are fraudulent doctors or lawyers or what have you.
What I think, though, is that people just WANT it to be true that every reporter is making up stuff, so they can smugly say "see! I told you the media was biased!', whereas bias isn't really the issue here. The issue is professional integrity.
I know a lot more reporters than a lot of you that are making these sweeping generalizations, and my experience is that 99% of them are hard-working schmoes that try like hell to get things right.

[boots]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
well, I doubt that was truly voluntary. More likely, because of their position, they were offered the opportunity to resign rather than be fired.
Not the same thing exactly as "taking" responsibility.

Point taken. I guess what I meant to say was that the buck stops on the editor's desk. Either they should take responsibility or they should be fired.


And I also think that the percentage of people like Blaire is pretty small. But one bad apple, as the saying goes....

[zigzag]

I agree that most reporters are probably conscientious and that Blair is an exception. I would clarify my earlier rant by saying:

a) There are traps inherent in the reporting/writing/selling process, and even conscientious reporters and papers can fall into them (this is true in almost any profession, from law to scientific research). It's therefore important to maintain a healthy skepticism about anything one reads, whatever the source.

b) I do have problems with certain writing/reporting styles, but this is a subjective complaint.

[mo]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
FWIW, I don't think the Blair case is representative, though I'm sure there are others like him in the profession, just like there are fraudulent doctors or lawyers or what have you.
What I think, though, is that people just WANT it to be true that every reporter is making up stuff, so they can smugly say "see! I told you the media was biased!', whereas bias isn't really the issue here. The issue is professional integrity.
I know a lot more reporters than a lot of you that are making these sweeping generalizations, and my experience is that 99% of them are hard-working schmoes that try like hell to get things right.

Oh yeah. I've worked with plenty of reporters too, and I've never met anybody who would even want to do what he did -- for example, faking being at the scene of a story that held the national spotlight. Every reporter I know would have wanted to take an assignment like the D.C. sniper and get into the middle of it instead of faking stuff. Blair is clearly an outlier; he's come off as kind of a sociopath in his recent remarks.

What's really exceptional about the Times case is how long they let it go on. I just haven't seen any major newspaper tolerate a track record like his -- they didn't necessarily have to fire him; they could've assigned him to review high-school plays until he quit. I'm not suggesting that as a good management approach, but usually anybody who did what Blair was known to have done (just all the little stuff that was wrong, not the big stuff that was blatantly fakedf) found himself on the way down the ladder, not receiving plumb assignments.

The Times will be a much better paper under the direction of somebody other than Howell Raines, who supressed dissenting points of view among his own columnists, among other things. It's too bad Gerald Boyd had to leave, because he's really good, but he's responsible, too.

[roger_ramjet]

The Fall of the Raines Regime

[roger_ramjet]

more from the Times: Rick Bragg Reports

Think I need to fix me a mint julep...

[Angus_D]

And who trusts governments either?

Today's lesson is: trust no-one.

[SimeyTheLimey]

(Originally posted in the "and now Wolfowitz admits it was all about oil" thread, but it is relevent here as well).

I hope that you guys have read and absorbed today's groveling apology in The Guardian. The "Wolfowitz admits that the war was about oil" story was, in effect, a total fabrication.

On Wednesday, journalists on the Guardian's website were alerted to a story running in the German press, in which the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, was said to have admitted, in effect, that oil was the main reason for the war in Iraq. The German sources were found, translated, and at 4.30pm that day a story sourced to them was posted on the website under the heading, "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil".

Mr Wolfowitz, in fact, had said nothing of the kind *** [this means several paragraphs have been omitted].

The story should not have run. In view of the significance of the statements attributed to Mr Wolfowitz, rigorous checking should have taken place. The hazard of translating remarks from German back into the English in which they were originally made should have been apparent.

I'm curious: the misinformation originated in the German press (which outlet, I don't know). The Guardian's mistake was in not independently checking up on what Wolfowitz said. Has the German media made a similar, fulsome, retraction? Or have they let the falsehood stand?

[Nicko]

Originally posted by SimeyTheLimey:
(Originally posted in the "and now Wolfowitz admits it was all about oil" thread, but it is relevent here as well).

I hope that you guys have read and absorbed today's groveling apology in The Guardian. The "Wolfowitz admits that the war was about oil" story was, in effect, a total fabrication.

Well, Wolfowitz is still a prick.