EXCLUSIVE: Speaker John Boehner’s Head Falls Off, Breaking Paul Ryan’s Nose [Corrected]
Correction: Boehner’s head didn’t fall off and Paul’s nose is fine.
The above apparently illustrates the Breitbart style book policy when the conservative web site publishes a story that is 100% untrue.
Over the weekend, Breitbart published an exclusive story revealing that President Obama’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch was on the legal team that defended President Clinton during the Whitewater investigation. That was a different Loretta Lynch, however. This would, with a conventional new site that knew the difference between ethics and a pangolin, mandate 1) removing the false story and 2) replacing it with a separate post explicating the error. But no. Here is how Brietbart handled it: leaving the story and the headline up in all its misrepresentation with a parenthetical “correction” added, which was explained only if you read all the way to the bottom of the story, where you would find the italicized information that everything you had just read was baloney. Such “Correction” notices usually explain that a detail was wrong or a name was misspelled. I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen one that said, in effect, “Never mind”…like this:
This kind of keen ethical judgment is why is why I stopped reading, relying on or referring to Breibart. If a story link reveals Breitbart as the source, I ignore it. I suggest you do the same.
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Pointer, Source and Graphic: Talking Points Memo
Ethics Alarms 
Wow. My head is swimming. It’s basically a lie.
“I am D.B.Cooper, I survived the jump and stashed the millions in a cabin in Tennessee after trekking cross-country from where I landed. I avoided bears and wolves and on the way endowed an orphanage with some of the cash*.
*I am not D.B. Cooper and nothing else I said was true.”
Their ratings must be slipping to have to keep eye-catching link bait up…
I am so glad I never paid attention to Breitbart.
“Obama’s Attorney General Nominee Loretta Lynn is Also the Queen of Country Music”
That would have been my headline. I keep calling the woman Loretta Lynn for some reason. But I have the luxury of making those stupid mistakes. I’m not a reporter/writer.
I recently read an article at Breitbart called “Tina Fey Is Box Office Poison” which claims that she is allowed to make movies that “bomb” because “the rewards that come with leftwing conformity are plenty lucrative.” Not only did every film mentioned in the article make a profit, but I doubt that film companies make movies for any other reason than to make money. Even more worrisome: the article has 738 comments, most of them vents about Tina Fey. That was my first and last visit to Breitbart.com.
Missed that; great example.
Wait a second, Jack. How would you have done it? Simply take the story down?
This is not like a newpaper correction or retraction where, two days later, in a different issue of the newspaper, they say, “oh yeah, two days ago, we referred to Loretta Lynch as someone, but we had the wrong person.” That is how newspapers do it and it is limited by the medium.
How do you do it on the internet? The internet is forever, they say. So, do you take the story down and then put up a two-line retraction (which no one will see because they will be looking for the false story)? Here, they left the false story up and added a correction so that it does not look like they are covering up a goof but actually pointing it out at its source.
How would you have done it? Cover it up? That looks like you are burying your own incompetence.
Here is what I would have done. I would have had the first line say: “RETRACTED” (NOT CORRECTED). Then, the “retraction would have been at the beginning of the story, not the end. It would have specified that in this story, the main fact, the identity of the person was incorrect, and apologize for the mistake, but leave the story up, so that people looking for the story would see that Breitbart corrected it. And, maybe put some kind of correction on the home page (which people may or may not ever see).
Basically, I would like Breitbart critics to explain what they would do to fix this clearly bone-headed goof. Bone-headed goofs happen. The question is, how do you fix them?
I will just sit back and criticize everyone else’s solutions, because I don’t think there is any way to do this that is not vulnerable to criticism. I think the way they did it was acceptable, but, as I said, I would have been a little more emphatic in pointing out the screw-up, so that it would be clear that I was no longer standing by that story. But, I would not simply take the story down, because someone is going to have it cached and they will say I am just trying to cover something up.
-Jut
But there’s two characteristics we’re considering here. First, is the corrected fact an extremely essential part of the story?
Johnny Smith murdered his wife with a leather handled knife (Correction: it was not Johnny Smith) is MILES away from Johnny Smith murdered his wife with a leather handled knife (Correction: it was a plastic handled knife). The correction in the latter is so mild that it doesn’t need a huge amount of fanfare whereas the correction in the former must be overt and meaningful as the secondary and tertiary effects of the mistake are considerable.
The second item we’re considering is HOW the correction is made. I think, also, there are MILES of difference between how you proposed to correct the piece (which puts up front that a factual error was made, corrects the error and allows the reader to then continue on with error fixed in their minds), whereas the Breitbart piece compels readers to go to the bottom (many of whom won’t) therefore most readers will continue on making all the false connections leading from the false data. Then they get to the bottom, see the correction, and then have to mentally unwind all the false conclusions they’d individually reached (many of whom won’t).
Actually, I think we are only dealing with the second issue. I think it is beyond dispute that the identity of Loretta Lynch is fundamental, as they make a connection to the Clinton team that is completely incorrect.
The only question here is how to correct it. Jack says take it down and put up a correction in its place. I do not think that is a good solution, as one can easily downplay the goof. They could have put up a new line that said, “In an earlier story, we reported that Obama had appointed Loretta Lynch as the new Attorney General. We thought this was the Loretta Lynch who worked with the Clintons on Whitewater. That was a mistake. Obama appointed a prosecutor from the Eastern District of New York whose name also happens to be Loretta Lynch.” (There, that’s better. It look like a simple mistake, not the muck-raking piece about the Clintons we were hoping for. Excellent!)
-Jut
Absolutely a valid point. Still, how Breitbart handled it was obviously, screamingly, absurdly wrong. We can argue about what the right handling would be, but whatever it is, this ain’t it.
Here is how Deadspin handled a similar situation (You know why I didn’t write about it? Breitbart broke the story.) Nope, I don’t like this either, but it’s a lot better than the Breitbart “solution.” The editor didn’t just correct it: in a linked note, he apologized in a post headlined. “How Deadspin Fucked Up The Cory Gardner Story.” Still, it was a link away. People just read headlines. Leaving false information online in a way that makes it easy to miss that the story is wrong is incompetent—doing it the way Breitbart did looks suspiciously like it is intended to deceive the unattentive. When I have been hoaxed, I usually publish a separate retraction, like in this case. But I do not run a news service, either. The commentary on stories that turn out to be hoaxes can still be valid and worth leaving up
Why leave up a false story to mislead? I like your solution: I like the solution of taking down the false post and replacing it with one that explains what happened and contains a link to the mistaken post rather than the other way around.