Yeah, I’m not seeing the uproar. I mean, it’s a big deal that they made a pretty significant error in their reporting. But they owned up to it quickly and punished the guy who made the error. That seems to be Working As Intended.
Yes, it would be great if they were infallible and never let a mistake slip through. In the absence of infallibility, I’ll take accountability as a close second.
IMO it’s extremely unlikely that Brian Ross knew his report was fake at the time he made it. The fallout for being wrong about that was completely predictable.
I think it’s likely that he was biased in favor of having the scoop on a Big Big story instead of just a Big story, and was therefore less careful than he should have been. But that he knew it was fake news and went ahead with it makes no sense at all.
Absolutely. The OP’s reading is one where you interpret the words in the worst way possible. But there is no reason to assume that is the only way to interpret them, and there are good reasons (as you noted) to not do so.
The term “fake news” is best reserved for news that is deliberately cooked up in order to create a false narrative. This looks more like a simple matter of valuing scoop over quality. There could easily have been bias in play that cause that imbalance, but that’s different from sitting down and crafting something purposely to deceive.
I don’t think they get as much credit for that, either.
This was not something they could suppress - it was going to come out one way or the other. Every other major news organization is reporting like mad on this same story. They needed to do what they did in order to maintain their reputation, which is a big part of their business model.
IOW, self-interest would completely account for their actions. So they don’t get any kudos for integrity.
HurricaneDitka, if this really outraged you, you would be concerned with how much Trump contributes to fake news on a regular basis. Every major news has made corrections at one time or another; this is not what fake news looks like. This is what fake news looks like.
Your exchange with running coach was telling:
This is where you would need to do what ABC just did and admit your error.
Not necessarily, although I don’t think it’s a clear denial of the accusation either.
I think that’s one possible reading of the quote. For example, if Al Franken / John Conyers said they were being absolutely pilloried for sexual assault, I wouldn’t take it necessarily as a denial of the claims against them, just an observation on the result.
Given the context of this remark (an internal company call) I think it’s more likely that Goldston was trying to impress the gravity of the error on his staff, not offer a denial (or an admission) to the “fake news” accusation.
Perhaps. I’d probably rate ABC News as a whole as more interested in playing things straight than Fox (although I’m not sure Brian Ross merits that assumption at this point), but I don’t believe that, for example, MSNBC is (see below).
I actually found even worse behavior from MSNBC:
Perhaps you don’t count MSNBC as a “mainstream news site” either though.
Except I don’t see this same sort of self-interest from right wing news sources in correcting the record. Also, what you say establishes the notion that mainstream media does, in fact, try to get it right in order to preserve its reputation. This is quite the opposite from what the right generally wants you to believe, that the MSM are just lying sacks of shit.
MSNBC Nov 16
All these stories are about Franken and the accusations.
Your post claiming there were no stories was the next day.
I don’t know who you’re referring to in using the term “the right”. I myself am on the right, and while I think the MSM is definitely biased to the left, it’s not to the point of standing by egregiously false news on subjects that will obviously come to light.
The bias manifests itself in much subtler ways, e.g. in choice of subjects to report on, in emphasis and tone, and in interpretation of ambiguous evidence.
HurricaneDitka, what was that about hearing crickets?
That’s not at all what my post was claiming, although I recognize now that simply quoting it was not as clear as it could have been. My claim is that there were no stories about Franken on the home page of MSNBC.com at the time of that post. See, this goes back to our discussion about the “extent, spin and visibility of certain stories”. If Fox News is guilty, in your given example, of burying a big story “below the fold”, then MSNBC was guilty, at least at that point, of burying it on the digital equivalent of page C17.
Or in other words, it’s not a bias you can actually point out-It’s a bias you can feel?
Let me remind you.
You said you searched and couldn’t find a single story.
I actually considered just adding this to the schadenfreude thread (and when I found The View clip I almost wished I had), but I thought there was some space for good discussion here too.
The only nitpick I would have with this is the word “quickly”. They were particularly slow to issue their [del]clarification[/del] [del]correction[/del] retraction, which is why this story blew up more than it otherwise would have. That was one of Goldston’s points.
I said I did “a search of ‘Franken’ on the home page”. That means that I went to MSNBC.com, pressed CTRL+F, typed ‘Franken’, and pressed Enter, and got no results. It was literally a search “on the home page” (basically, a look at the headlines they were emphasizing at that point) not using their search engine to scour the entire site.
At the time of that post what was the breaking story about Al Franken that wasn’t being covered, and what story should it have replaced?
At the time of that post two of their major competitors still had stories about Franken (or Franken-Trump-Moore) on their home page. MSNBC did not. That makes it, I think, a perfect example of the “extent, spin and visibility of certain stories”
Here you go. Wayback Machine Nov 16 18:57:15 GMT (10:57 am Pacific)
First story.
What I see on MSNBC is breaking stories, so once again I ask you: At the time of that post what was the breaking story about Al Franken that wasn’t being covered, and what story should it have replaced?
The fact that you can hunt until you find a time when Al Franken wasn’t on the main page doesn’t impress me in the least.
It doesn’t “really outrage” me. Like I said in the OP, I thought it was “interesting”. I don’t know what I said that gave you a sense I was “really outraged”.