The thread about poor people having to eat pet food inspires my question: how can you trust what you read?
Remember the WASHINTON POST scandal? A few years back, a reporter wrote a totally fictional story about a young black girl getting hooked on heroin. The reporter was about to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize, when somebody blew the whistle.It turned out that the little girl had never existed. Later, the BOSTON GLOBE had a writer (Mike Barnicle) who admittted to making up just about all of his “human interest” stories.
I myself have had experiences: a few years back, I called a reported for a local paper, regarding a story he had written (this was about a dangerous medical procedure that had been performed in the past). It told him of my experience, and a week later I saw that he had totally misquoted me! I angrily called the editor, and demanded (and hgot) a retraction.
So, what policies to newspapers use to determine the triuth of what they spew out?:eek:
Those who write for newspapers are people. People have ideas, beliefs, persuasions, agendas, goals, etc., that color their perceptions. And people have varying levels of integrity – some lie, others lie a lot, a few lie all the time.
I’m not trying to generate a GD here, but it happens that a large percentage of those who write for newspapers share a common influence on their thinking – an education at a liberal-thinking journalism school. (There is, AFAIK, no other type of journalism school in the U.S.) This explains the fact that media coverage of watershed political and social issues, such as abortion, gun control, welfare, etc., is heavily slanted to the left.
All newspapers (probably) have standards or codes or rules regarding the truthfulness of what they print, but it’s important to keep in mind that such policies are enforced internally, by editors and publishers who – you guessed it! – were by and large once reporters/writers educated in a liberal journalism school. There is to my knowledge no outside independent body that serves in that role.
An op/ed writer at the Cincinnati Enquirer once called me at home in response to a letter I had written disagreeing with the paper’s stance on gun control. (This was just after the Stockton schoolyard shootings, when assault rifle bans were all the rage.) He explained that he was trying to put together a “fair, balanced” column on the subject of assault weapons, but he humbly admitted a complete lack of knowledge on the subject. He asked specific questions; I recall a special interest on his part in the BAR, short for Browning Automatic Rifle, and whether it might be considered an assault weapon.
I answered all his questions as well as I could, and of course his subsequent column misquoted me in every detail.
Years earlier, I was in an occupational position that required me to give information to reporters occasionally, usually regarding a construction project. I can’t recall a single instance when a reporter’s story quoted me correctly, and most often the “facts” reported were simply wrong.
How truthful are people? I see very few stories in newspapers, about things that I know about, that get it quite right. I think that most papers try hard to report accurately, but people do have axes to grind and those who own newspapers are no different. I’ve worked on newspapers and considering they way they are assembled and the time constraints involved, it’s a wonder they get anything right.
PS. Of course, before the “liberals” took over the media everything was reported with complete honesty and accuracy. That was back in the “good old days” of William Randolph Hearst, et al.
I am a newspaper editor. I have worked in newspapers since I was 12 years old. I have known liberal newspapermen and conservative newspapermen. For the most part the people in the newspaper business are as hardworking and honest as any I know, perhaps even more so since they realize what they are responsible for.
Yes, some get some facts wrong. On the average a reporter will talk to between 35 and 50 people each week working on between 10 and 20 stories. That’s why we have corrections in papers. But you may rest assured that those reporters who get it wrong get chewed on, dinged in pay or in some cases even fired for making those errors you see.
In spite of what TBone says, we try very hard to be objective. Yes, to some right wingers, we seem liberal. And to most left wingers we seem incredibly conservative. That’s the nature of the business. Those that can make sweeping generalizations about things are generally upset when things are not reported their way.
Above my desk I keep a quote that an editor of mine wrote in the 1950s long before I worked for him. He had written something that did not please some group in town who became irate because their little itch had not been scatched or their ego had not been salved sufficiently - so he wrote this:
I think most newspapermen feel much the same. I know I look at that yellowed piece of newspaper clipping each day when I sit down at my desk and not. But I too, make the occasional error.
TV
As others have noted, newspapers are notoriously bad about certain things.
I find problems all the time with basically every article regarding science, computers, and other areas that I am knowledgable about. I assume that historians have problems with history articles etc.
Every prof. I ever knew regretted being interviewed by the media since they ended up getting misquoted and distorted. They clearly have no interest in getting basic facts straight.
For the non-sciences, my fav. example was during the height of the “Monica” controversy. In the same article, the local rag asserted as well known facts that: a. Clinton was trying to get Monica back from the Pentagon to the White House, b. Clinton was trying to get Monica a job in NYC. Two paragraphs apart, self-conflicting rumors described as facts.
If you have any knowledge about the topic, you are appalled at what is written.
I know that journalists have to live, and that they have to make their stories interesting. However, whemn I buy a newspaper, I expect some standard of minimal truthfulness. Like, I don’t expect to be lied to!
Heck, thats why I buy the NY TIMES instead of the NATIONAL STAR! If I wanted to read about the latest Elvis/JFK sightings, I’d buy one of those rags. I expect more from the NYT, and damn it, I should get it! Why can’t editors:
-insist on completely factual accounts
-report only on WHAT WAS SAID, not some cub reporter’s fantasies
-own up to their own mistakes
To my mind, the editor that allowed the WP reporter (who made up the fictitious child heroin addict) to publish the bogus story, should have been fired as well!
I’m fed up! Yes, there is something called OBJECTIVE TRUTH! And if you are not smart enough to recognize it, you should NOT be an editor11
Hmm…
Apparently this has become General Diatribes.
Because, ralph, no two people will agree on what actually happened. Sure, there is objective truth, but objectivity is always in the eye of the beholder.
Newspapers strive to be objective and balanced. But there are always problems, mostly because they are dealing with human beings. This means:
- Observers disagree about what happens. However the story is written, someone will think they got it wrong.
- Reporters have to decide how to tell the story. Since they bring their own viewpoints (even a viewpoint of objectivity), whatever they write isn’t going to satisfy all the witnesses.
- The people at an event aren’t objective, and perceive any attempt to be objective – by not siding with them – as a way of slanting the news.
- Reporters often jot down quotes on the fly. Later, when looking at their notes, their recollections don’t match what the quoted person said (and, what the quoted person said, may not be what the person remembers saying afterwards).
- Reporters are not experts on all subjects. Thus, when dealing with a highly technical area, they miss nuances or just plain get things wrong. And, again, the experts they talk to may not have actually said what they think they said.
Re: the Washington Post story – the reason why that got so much play was simply because it was the exception to the rule. That sort of fictionalization is extremely rare in newspapers, and practically nonexistant in news stories (the Washington Post story was a feature, and Mike Barnacle was writing a column. Those are both different from news stories, though it doesn’t excuse the problem). Again, in the case of the Washington Post, the writer was fired. The principle is clear – get caught making up facts and you’re out of work. Consequently, no reporter dares do it. Pointing out one or two bad examples out of the millions of stories published each day as symptoms of a systematic problem. is the Big Lie at its worst.
Regarding bias in the media (which could be a whole 'nother thread, better suited to GD)…
The late Katherine Graham said something that I thought was really profound. An interviewer asked her something like, “I assume you insist that reporters be unbiased?”, and she replied, “No, NOT unbiased. DETATCHED”, and proceeded to elaborate.
There is a BIG difference.
In order for someone to be truly unbiased, it is first necessary to know what the absolute truth is.
What is the truth on, say, gun control? Or abortion? Or racism? If you ask a liberal, you get different answers than when you ask a conservative.
And if you say you know which are the right answers, guess what: YOU’RE biased!
But whether a reporter is liberal or conservative (yes, there are conservative reporters: read the Washington Times or the Wall Street Journal) the impact of their bias will be minimized if they strive to remain detached.
I’ll try to do this without straying into GD. I recently finished a 6 year stint working in politics. I dealt with the media on a daily basis.
I had a few basic rules in dealing with the media:
*Always be extremely careful of what you say and how you say it
*Just because they ask you a question, doesn’t mean you have to answer it.
*Always make it absolutely clear when a conversation is on the record and when it is off the record.
*Never, ever lie
*Never, ever trust them
That might seem a bit paranoid but it’s what I learnt after being burnt a few times. I put all news stories through a bullshit filter and just accept that most of what I see is simply not really correct. However I don’t think that the problem is invented stories like those described above.
A few gross generalisations: Most of the print media in Australia (like the US) has a definite left bias. On the other hand most of the radio personalities are very conservative (or at least pretend to be). TV news is a bit of a mixed bag but will always run with a beat-up if given the opportunity. The “Current Affairs”, “60 Minutes” tabloid tv shows deal almost exclusively in beat-ups, scaremongering and cheap sentimentality.
Everybody who deals with the media regularly knows that such biases exist and they deal with them accordingly. It’s the poor schmucks who don’t know how to deal with the media (the ones being chased down the road by the Current Affairs camera with the journo shouting “Mr Smith why did you feed those old people dogfood and steal their pensions?”) that you almost felt a bit sorry for.
I do not think that most journalists are vindictive (though some certainly are) nor do I think that they are generally lazy or stupid. To rise in a very competitive profession you have to be reasonably smart.
But, being on the other side of the journalistic process for a while makes it clear that some do come in with their own agenda, and many don’t bother to check facts nor bother to seek out other sides to an argument. However those are things that you can deal with (you make sure that you get the facts to them, you make sure that whenever a particular issue comes up that they call you first because you were so helpful last time.)
The real problem I found, and the causeof most of my journalist inspired grief was journalists who had already written the story in their head and decided what they were going to say before they started getting their facts together. The result was selective quoting, ignoring inconvenient facts and sloppy research.
To be fair a lot of this is driven by the time and output pressures that are put upon journos.
As an aside, one of my ex-bosses used to think the problem with a lot of journalists was that they wanted to be Bernstein and Woodward rather than just reporting the news properly.
As a fairly religous person, I’ve noticed that pretty much every newspaper article dealing with religion, spirituality, or any kindred concept is usually horribly distorted and inaccurate. I’m RC, but I suspect that coverage of other faiths isn’t much better. I’m also an engineer, and I’ll second the notion that journalists seem to be totally clueless about all things scientific. I couldn’t begin to count the number of scientific or technical articles that I’ve read which I’ve known to be inaccurate. All that crap is why I don’t read newspapers anymore. Online news sites, like MSN.com and the news on Excite.com, are usually far superior in quality. I also watch TV news, mostly for the local stuff.
As a journalist, I would very much agree with Motog’s comments above. In terms of trust - if I promise someone involved with a story - witness/victim/subject/police officer - that something is off the record then I totally stick to that. It’s never worth breaking an embargo and all future relations with someone important just for the sake of one crappy little scoop.
If I was investigating someone who had done something illegal and IMO (again so prejudice comes in) disgusting or hypocritical then I might break a promise. I haven’t ever done a deliberate sting though.
However not all journalists (often due to work pressure) are able to stick to this, so do be careful. Just use common sense and don’t incriminate yourself. Nor be over paranoid or rude about genuine, standard enquiries (if your company goes bust or your CEO is arrested, of course you’re going to get calls. It’s their job to expose corruption as much as it’s the press officer’s job to hide it!). Just be polite, and honest, and genuinely say if you can’t comment.
Journalists do also use the trick of “putting words into someone’s mouth.” This is largely because so many people give such totally crappy interview quotes. If a shipwreck survivor really wants to be quoted as: “Um, yeah, it was cold,” Bob Brown said. “Yeah, I guess, it was sort of scary like” then he’s just not going to make print.
Skipper Bob Brown described in graphic detail the freezing hours of terror the crew endured in the icy, pitch-black waters.
is what it would probably morph into. For a tabloid newspaper you might “tidy up” or tweak the quotes: “It was freezing cold - we were all scared for our lives,” skipper Bob Brown said.
I don’t have a problem with this in this case, because (a) he sounds more coherent, (b) it’s actually representing his true sentiment better than he can, and © it makes for a better story.
The other words-in-mouth thing is suggesting things to people - again, this does get used unscrupulously. But in some cases, with a very shy or dumbstruck (or stupid) interviewee, it’s necessary. EG:
Frankly, I’m shocked at the suggestion that this “putting-words-in-mouth” is a standard technique for mainstream journalists. I certainly would never do that, I have never been encouraged to do that, my editors have never done that, and, as far as I know my colleagues have never done that.
When it comes to direct quotes, I feel free to clean it up – take out the pauses, the repetitions, the slip-ups, the “umms” and “ahs,” and, if it’s a news story rather than a feature, sometimes to clean up the grammar or word order if it’s a very minor change. Sometimes I’ll change the order of two separate sentences in a quote if it makes more sense that way, but only by breaking it into two separate quotes.
I think, as has been said before, there are two huge factors involved –
-
People often remember what they meant to say rather than what they actually said.
-
People with specialised knowledge are often more picky about the way things are described than is necessary for a general interest reader. In other words, for the journalist and the reader, it might just be two different ways of saying the same thing; whereas, to the expert, they mean two different things. Language means different things in different contexts. Experts shouldn’t expect that the general public is going to use their specialised terms in the same way that they do. (I, for example, feel justified in using the word “system” to mean “method” or “process” when it suits me to; technical people get on my case for that, but I don’t care.)
Well, my $.02, as someone with a fair amount of experience dealing with the media.
-
Newspapers as institutions and reporters as human beings do try hard to be honest and ‘true’ [the ‘truth’ is to a large degree a matter of opinion, of course]. I tend to find TV is a little more oriented towards whether something is an entertaining story than print media, but they don’t really want to get anything wrong. The outright fabrications are extremely rare (sometimes surprisingly to me, given that there really isn’t that much check on them).
-
Papers can never be perfect: they have a very short amount of time to learn things, and a very small amount of space to explain things to a very broad audience. Don’t forget the second part, when you’re reading an article on something you’re an expert in. I’ve spent a lot of time convincing technical and legal experts that while they could nitpick a given sentence, it gets the real idea across to a lay audience far better than a technically unimpeachable but incomprehensible paragraph. Yes, sometimes they do make mistakes, but you would, too, given the time and space limitations.
-
As far as political biases, most (print) reporters are probably somewhat liberal. (Is it because only liberals want to become reporters, or because reporters who really know what’s going on but have no personal stake in it tend to become liberals?)
However, most newspapers (and all TV stations) are owned by very large corporations, who never want to offend any readers, and more importantly have a lot of money riding on the economic system pretty much going as it is now. In the end, I think we all know who has the final say (hint: the guy who signs the checks doesn’t lose). -
But the bias to be concerned about isn’t blatant lying or outright censorship (‘kill the story because it makes our advertisor look bad’) (though it does happen rarely). It’s more of the fact that papers and TV only cover ‘NEWS’. And ‘NEWS’ tends to be narrowly defined, especially for TV, and is always ‘within the box’, in that it doesn’t push the boundary of the group-think at the time, or cover gradual changes that add up.
I’d like to know Istara’s real name, so I never hire him. Creating quotes for people is unacceptable-- and very different from asking leading questions. In fact, the description given starts with a cardinal no-no: asking a yes-no question. No wonder you have a hard time talking to reticent subjects.
As for the truthfulness of journalists: we ry hard to become experts on something in 6 hours or less. Not enough of us can balance a chequebook, let alone deal with medical stories. And we have to deal with editors in another office regretting their career choice and thinking they can write better than we can 
My college psychology professor, during the unit on memory, related the following incident that had happened to him.
He was driving his daughter to athletic practice one afternoon. He pulled into the neighborhood where the school was located. Midway down one block, a dog suddenly darted out in front of his car. To his horror (and his daughter’s), he was unable to stop his station wagon in time, and the dog bounced off his bumper. The dog staggered a bit a few feet in front of his now-stopped vehicle, and then dropped to the pavement.
The professor got out of his car and verified that the dog was dead. Then he went up towards the house from whose yard the dog had come. As he approached the door, a woman came out, furious.
“Did you see that?” said the woman. “Can you believe that guy?”
Turns out the woman had seen a red sports car zoom past the house and hit the dog. She didn’t recognize the station wagon that had actually done the deed at all. She swore up and down that the killer car was a sporty red vehicle; she had “seen” it.
In other words, she had edited her personal reality to fit her expectations within seconds of the event.
So, ralph, if you’re able to devise a system by which concrete and unassailable facts are consistently extracted from eyewitnesses, please let us know when and where we can buy stock in your enterprise, because everyone involved will get unimaginably wealthy.
As a PR person who started out as a reporter, I’ve been dealing with this issue for more than 25 years. And while this really is Great Debates territory, I’ll get my two cents in before the thread gets moved or locked.
-
I start with the premise that the reporter is a professional who’s trying to do a professional job.
-
The person being interviewed knows more about the subject than the person doing the interview. (There are rare exceptions, mostly in trade media.)
-
Because of this, the person being interviewed often does not express him/herself at a level the reporter can understand.
-
People remember what they meant, not what they said. I can’t even count the number of times when I tape recorded an interview, and the subject INSISTED he hadn’t used those words.
-
Yes, there is bias. Your truth is not my truth. Our local TV station has a feature called “You Paid for It” and the reporter has never once found a story where “you paid for it, and you got a good deal.”
As for my personal experience, when Mrs. Kunilou was on strike, both the union and management were in complete agreement that while a certain reporter did not make a single inaccurate or false statement, both sides thought he had biased toward the other. And only a week after an NFL player had collapsed and died at training camp, one of the Kunilou kids passed out at football practice and was taken to the emergency room. One of the TV stations decided to make a big deal out of it. Was it truly a big deal (teenager faints, is revived, goes home, told to take it easy for a couple of days)? No. But they did a big story on the warning signs of heat exhaustion, etc. and the part with my kid in it was “accurate.”
In my experience, the biggest flaw with reporting on technical subjects is that the reporters cut out most of the disclaimers. If the scientist being interviewed says that one interpretation of an experiment provides some evidence that a new theory might be more plausible than previously thought, the headline will be “Scientist proves new theory true!”.
Just remember to mentally put back all the disclaimers, and you should be OK.
My XGF was a newspaper reporter, and one problem I noticed was that there’s a bit of a game of “telephone” at the newspaper. She would interview people and write a story, then a couple editors would change the story. The finished product would read well, but be misleading or wrong a lot of the time.
Anyway, I too have noticed that in areas where I have specialized knowledge, reporters seem to get things wrong a lot of the time. The inference from this is that they get things wrong, in general, a lot of the time.