Newspaper "scandals"

[liamstliam]

I am curious about something.

As some of you know, I was a newspaper reporter for 11 years before becoming a teacher, I have worked part-time at papers on and off since then, and I am a total Web newspaper geek.

I wonder what some of you think about the reporting scandals at the New York Times and USA Today. When you have professional interests, sometime you overreact.

I recently read Jayson Blair's book, and most of the time, I had to explain to people who he was.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I found it distasteful and very upsetting. I hold my journalists to a very high standard -- I have a few friends who went through college for journalism, and I expect "professionals" to behave like that, and "professional organizations" to string them from the highest limb when they don't. If you want to make stuff up, the Weekly World Whatever is always hiring...or nowadays you can just right your own blog.

On the flip side, no one seems to be telling the truth nowadays, so one more liar/fabricator just gets a shrug out of most people. :-/

[dsrtao]

I noted way back in elementary or middle-school days that when I went to a news-worthy event, the coverage was never quite the same as what *I* saw. That doesn't bother me much: I realize that no one has an omniscient point of view.

What does bother me: political biases masquerading as straight news; coverage of technical issues by people who don't understand the technology; coverage of foreign affairs by people who apparently don't know anything about the history of the region in question; coverage of the economy by people who know nothing about economics; coverage of any government-related issue by people who do no background fact checking.

And then I have to worry about reporters making their stories out of whole cloth? Oy. Blair should have been flogged around Times Square.

[theresat.livejournal.com]

There was recently an issue with one of the humor websites that I read daily, collegehumor.com. Apparently, the site ran a column called The Ten Commandments of College, and three days later, the Penn State newspaper ran a column called Ten College Commandments.

Since collegehumor.com has over 5 million readers, and two of their regular columnists go to Penn State, this was noticed, and remarked upon in a daily update.

Within two days, the Penn State paper had fired the writer (a senior journalism student), and had written an apology that was published in the paper (http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2004/04/04-19-04tdc/04-19-04dops-column-01.asp).

She does talk about the scandals at the NY Times and USA Today. And as she points out at the end of her column, they were running a full page spread on the awards that the paper's staff had recieved that year.

I guess that I hadn't really thought about Blair or Kelley too much, until now. Now that I've seen something that hits a little more close to home, a situation that I could more than imagine being in, I feel much more strongly about all of it. A college student run humor website is ripped off by a school paper. That's not something that I would never imagine could have happened back at the Colonel. You like to think it wouldn't, but obviously, it does.

I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to put in my two (or one and a half) cents.

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Hey, T!

After I read that article, I forwarded the link to Jim Romasnesko, and it's up on his Media News site.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45

At this time, it is the top item in the left-hand column.

Dad

[theresat.livejournal.com]

Did he put it up after you sent it to him, or before?

If it's after, I'm excited, because I helped spread the word. Awesome.

;)

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

Looking at the timing, I am pretty sure it went up *because* of my note to him, so, yes, you had an impact. (and I credited you in my note to him).

Dad