http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I
You’ve probably memorized that State Farm TV commercial where the woman tells her friend that she believes everything on the internet because it has to be true, and introduces her “French model” date—a grotesque geek wearing a belly pack who can barely manage “Uh..Bonjour!”—whom she met on the internet. Well, last week we were treated to a lesson in how the mainstream media, even its most prestigious and trusted members, are about as trustworthy as her date.
None other than the exalted Washington Post breathlessly reported last week, in a front page story, that “the federal government wants to create super Wi-Fi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month…If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas.”
The story was stunning and worrisome–Why is the government competing with private enterprise? How can it undertake such a sweeping discretionary initiative with the Treasury deep in debt? Wait, what??—and rapidly spread all over the 24-hour news media, including cable, radio and the internet (Uh..Bonjour!). It is there still, largely uncorrected. The story, meanwhile, was essentially untrue, a mistake. Yet as of yesterday, it was still being reported and argued about as fact on such respectable and trusted websites as Salon, Reason, UPI, Business Investor, The Daily Caller, NPR and many more. The Post, meanwhile, has still not published a clear and prominent retraction, and the reporter who wrote the erroneous story is still spreading misinformation.
How could this happen? Jon Brodkin explains at Ars Technica:
“A journalist gets a story completely wrong and doesn’t want to believe it. Instead of correcting the original story, a “follow-up” gets written to give the appearance that no correction is needed—the issue just needs to be explained in further detail. The real purpose is to avoid correcting the record while implying that the original story wasn’t wrong.”
Ah, yes. How human, how understandable! Also completely irresponsible, unethical and unprofessional. Where are the editors? Where is accountability? Journalists who behave in this manner shouldn’t be able to get front page stories published in the Washington Post. Journalists like this shouldn’t be journalists.
Read Brodkin’s thorough and fair account (here) of how this story acme to pollute the public’s understanding, and weep. This is not a flukey occurrence that can be brushed off as meaningless and forgivable. This is the mark of an untrustworthy profession, without proper controls, adequate judgement, and professional standards.
“Bonjour!”
_____________________________________
Pointer: Instapundit
Facts:Ars Technica
Ethics Alarms 
The link in the last paragraph (“Read Brodkin’s thorough and fair account here . . .”) leads to a search box page.
Thanks, fixed. (My keyboard died mid-post, and I was jumping back and forth from my laptop to my PC. Sorry!)
Long and rather boring but I plowed through just to be sure ‘Obama-net’ isn’t soon to join the ‘Obama phone’ already in existence. Thanks for putting my mind at ease.
You do realize I mean the linked article is the long and boring one, right? I don’t want anymore ‘misunderstandings’ about my intent.
Don’t get paranoid on me, now., Kimberly.
I wish I could say that this surprises me, but it doesn’t. What baffles me is that consumers of lazy and irresponsible journalism do not cancel their subscriptions and turn off their televisions. And then I realize the error in my logic: to naively assume that news consumers want the truth. They don’t. Consumers of news want their version of “truth” and journalists are happy to give it to therm.
Like that woman wanted to think she was dating a French model?
I think they want the truth—they juts can’t handle the truth, or the extra effort it takes to discover it.
When I worked at the US Chamber, I had occasional interviews about some studies I was running. Inevitably, the ensuing reports published were wrong, factually and analytically. Because I knew the topic, I knew it was crap—and then it dawned on me: why do I accept the reports on topics I DON’T know well? They are probably just as wrong.
And they are.
The dirty little secret is that this is not a field populated with the best and the brightest, and never has been.
Years ago, I was required at work to be the sucker who had to give short reports to the media about wildlife items (deer hunt statistics, etc). I would provide a 5-10 minute on-camera interview, then spend another 10-15 minutes talking to the reporter. I would provide my phone (and later, email) so they could follow up with questions, concerns,etc.
They never did. And the reports they filed into the newpaper or tv news were embarrassing. They’d cut things so they were totally incorrect, or even manage to cut the interview so it seems I was saying the exact opposite.
It was then that I figured that any media outlet cannot be trusted to get a story correct — let alone if they already had a particular slant they wanted for a story. Now, I assume any media story has some incorrect information – I try to make it a mental game for myself — “what is the wrong data here?” by checking other media outlets, left, right and middle, to try to figure out what actually happened.
This kind of stuff is probably why that poll where people who don’t watch the news know more about current events can happen. I just got tired of blatantly poorly written pieces for the occasional gem. Better use of my time to scan other sources.
This not only raises ethical issues, but likewise ones of journalistic incompetance. How many so-called reporters write columns on stories of history, science or regional culture and truly have more than an inkling of what they’re talking about? They generally gloss over their ignorance with a combination of standardized rhetoric and generalized notions on an elementary level that are often outdated or just an untrue repetition of another journalist’s work which was likewise untrue. It seems that the modern incarnation of the profession has come down to high sounding babble aimed at enhancing the author or the author’s pet causes, rather than disseminating information. Perhaps that’s because modern journalists have too narrow a field of study in college. If you’re going to write about something, you should either have a background in it or be willing to take the trouble to self-educate yourself first.
Oh, and where’s the ombudsman? On the way out?
Are facts even relevant anymore: