The whole “who’s a worse fact checker, bloggers or the MSM” debate can get tiresome, but I’d like to revisit it anyway. Matt Yglesias:
Apparently on his show earlier today, Chris Matthews was talking about the future of journalism and worried that “the bloggers don’t fact-check.”
I find myself consistently surprised by how frequently this concern is voiced. The fact of the matter is that outside of peer reviewed publications by university presses, books aren’t fact-checked. Live or quasi-live television broadcasts of the sort Matthews hosts or that cable networks show all day aren’t fact-checked. Heck, newspapers aren’t fact-checked. Fact-checking is a fairly idiosyncratic element of the magazine publishing industry. What’s more, if you actually read magazines it’s clear that even a super-rigorous fact-checking process like what they do at The New Yorker doesn’t actually prevent significant errors of interpretation, omission, etc.
Indeed, I love the New Yorker and am in awe of its ability to keep simple factual and grammatical errors out of the magazine, but they really fucked up the run-up to the Iraq war.
Everyone — no matter how “multi-layered” the editing process — makes mistakes, bad ones, if they write regularly. The question is how errors are dealt with.
When it comes to simple, factual errors, the structure of blogs makes transparent correction much easier. Putting a strike through whatever stupid thing you wrote a few minutes after you wrote it just works better, IMHO, than burying an official correction in the back of the paper a few days after the error occurred. But I don’t think that’s such an important issue. Alessandra Stanley notwithstanding, the original level of basic factual accuracy is pretty high in, say, the Times.
A bigger problem is the perpetuation of cherished myths, like the story that Al Gore invented claimed to have invented the internet. And a bigger problem still is mainstream media’s unwillingness to revisit major errors of a more complex sort. The Times did revisit the Judy Miller debacle but that’s obviously the exception, not the rule, and, in any case, it was only brought about by intense scrutiny from elsewhere (Michael Massing; Jack Shafer).
But what puzzles me most is the unwillingness of opinion writers to admit they were wrong about things like the Iraq war. Why can’t Tom Friedman say “Sorry about `suck on this’, I don’t know what I was thinking”? Ditto for Sully (who’s a blogger, but an establishment one) with The Bell Curve, B-Mac Part I, etc. etc. Ditto Ambinder with the terror alerts.
To me, if someone makes a gargantuan mistake and doesn’t address it, it’s hard for me to take them seriously anymore. I think there may be a generational difference here. I don’t think any of my grandparents ever used the words “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” even once in their entire lives. They thought it would undermine the authority if they did. Establishment media sees things the same way.
But in the age of google, YouTube, and Lexis Nexis, it’s tough to convince people that you’re always right. Establishment media’s efforts to maintain the charade that it is marks it as essentially old-fashioned and conservative in some crucial way. “We’re the New York Times, fuck you” isn’t so different from “I’m the decider, fuck you” as a response to substantive criticism.
WereBear
They haven’t absorbed the fact that we are actually in the age of google, YouTube, and Lexis Nexis. Or they wouldn’t tell such whoppers with such serene confidence.
And with print media bleeding money they aren’t confident enough to suck it up about mistakes, either.
Derelict
Now now–Mathews and the rest can say with conviction that bloggers don’t fact check because the blogger they’re most familiar with is Drudge. Drudge’s decade-long Reign of Error is all the evidence they need that whatever they read on a blog is likely to be unreliable.
El Cid
One funny part of this debate is a reversal of standards.
For the major money media, any number of major and minor gigantic errors in favor of hawk and conservative agendas are to be ignored in favor of some smaller number of good, thorough investigation.
For the dissident and blog media, any number of days having to be spent in untangling a daily barrage of distortions and propaganda are to be ignored in favor of reporting and claim errors.
So, for the New York Times, it’s, ‘feh, yeah, so we used lies and government claims to help sell a major war for months, we said we were sort of sorry, and then we did this story on warrantless wiretapping.’
For my entire life I’ve had to rely on some network of alternative media — newsletters, magazines, journals, radio, and now blogs — just to make it through the necessary corrections for the daily lies & distortions.
Now, just think of this as a consumer. Okay, sure, you can subscribe to our movie rental service, but for every 10 movies you watch, 9 of them will require that you go out and buy additional discs which correct errors and clear up dialogue.
This is a lot of extra work to have to go to in order to be a reasoning consumer of major news media products. Thanks guys.
Brick Oven Bill
There is plenty of fact-checking in this medium. For instance, DougJ can say: ‘There will be no medical rationing under a government healthcare system’. Then astute commenters can say:
“Raising the top bracket from 35 to 39.6% will only raise $20 billion, or around 1% of the existing budget deficit. Of course there will have to be rationing if the promise to expand coverage to more people, duh. What planet do you live on? Planet Academia? Raising this bracket to 100% will only cover 12% of the existing budget deficit. Don’t you teach math? God almighty.”
And then somebody else, most likely a female with no experience interacting with government agencies, can say: ‘But the government is really efficient, and can provide service at a reduced cost.’
And then astute commenters can say:
“Lady, you are as dumb as an old box of hair, found under the sink in the bathroom of a Detroit municipal wastewater facility.”
DougJ
@Crematorium Bill
That is almost too good of a spoof.
David
Don’t you know the entire Bush Administration was a Liberal plot to make Republicans look stupid?
Midnight Marauder
To me, if someone makes a gargantuan mistake and doesn’t address it, it’s hard for me to take them seriously anymore.
Excellent post, and I think this line really sums it up quite nicely.
The reason that people hate Bush and Cheney; the reason that more and more people continue to respect/view/read Establishment Media outlets less and less; the reason that, even though Democrats are kind of shitting the bed right now, there’s still no way people will put Republicans back in power any time soon is because never once have these individuals apologized in any meaningful or beneficial way for their grievous and deadly decisions and behaviors.
They haven’t absorbed the fact that we are actually in the age of google, YouTube, and Lexis Nexis. Or they wouldn’t tell such whoppers with such serene confidence.
And I think this is a major part of the equation as well. They don’t fully realize the magnitude to which instantaneous pushback and (more importantly) accountability exists in this day and age.
Or, the hope of accountability in most cases, I suppose.
General Winfield Stuck
The run up to the Iraq War was well beyond simple error. There was really only one major MSM outlet who kept remained above the “Tomorrow Is Christmas” mentality that swept the MSM in anticipation of an honest to gawd invasion. And that outlet was McClatchy. Who really did nothing special other than simply doing their jobs.
The breathless anticipation of live embed reporting for jackpot ratings was too much too resist for our Fourth Estate, and it encapsulated in bloody terms what is systemically wrong with today’s profit centered media. And they had the perfect cover, or excuse from the post 9-11 hyperpatriotism era. Which was PRECISELY when they are supposed to say wait a minute.
It was a test orchestrated by a lawless regime and the indispensable free press failed miserably. They tried to make some amends during the remainder of the Bush Criminal Syndicate administration, with only fleeting successes.
Now they are floundering again in the face of the Mighty Wurlitzer, by bringing the Flat Earthers on our teevees daily, to wank on about insane conspiracies by treasonous dems. Some of it is being lightly truth checked, but the obvious question arises from the ratings fueled freak show.
Why do we need to debate insanity? Why do Death Panels need debunking? and Why is Tom Delay not in Prison, Instead of on Hardball demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate. Crazy sells is why. And the show must go on.
El Cid
People who think it’s funny to repeatedly spoof play conservative weirdos can go straight to hell. I think you’re a bunch of a**holes and not ingenious wordsmiths.
jwb
@Midnight Marauder: “And I think this is a major part of the equation as well. They don’t fully realize the magnitude to which instantaneous pushback and (more importantly) accountability exists in this day and age.
Or, the hope of accountability in most cases, I suppose.”
I’m not sure actually. Yes, pushback can be almost instantaneous, but really the pushback remains relatively powerless—meaning that for the most part the pols, pundits and MSM can still, more often than not, get away with ignoring it if they have the gumption to do so. It’s only those cases where the pushback goes seriously viral that they have to deal with it, and there’s a lot of random still in getting something to go viral…
arguingwithsignposts
In case nobody else brings it up: Stephen Glass, bitchez!
Midnight Marauder
@jwb:
I’m not sure actually. Yes, pushback can be almost instantaneous, but really the pushback remains relatively powerless—meaning that for the most part the pols, pundits and MSM can still, more often than not, get away with ignoring it if they have the gumption to do so. It’s only those cases where the pushback goes seriously viral that they have to deal with it, and there’s a lot of random still in getting something to go viral…
A few years ago, I might have agreed more with that sentiment, but I think as of late, the fact we’ve gotten it down to “more often than not” from “pretty much all the fucking time” is pretty commendable. Not to mention that this thing is still very much in its infancy.
I think there are two dynamics at work, in reality. One is that the Establishment doesn’t really understand just how much the world has shifted around, and will continue to rapidly do so. The other is that the increased accountability mechanisms of the Age of Google are still in a very nebulous form right now. But surely, if not slowly, we are getting are shit together…
Midnight Marauder
how much the world has shifted around them
Stupid no edit function.
freelancer
Wholly OT,
But just found in Sadly, No’s latest thread and I couldn’t not share:
youtube.com/watch?v=JyYhdY-A_Hs
What. the. FUCK?!
Kryptik
The problem with mainstream news isn’t the lack of fact checking.
It’s the lack of fact, or at least the recognition of it. It’s the legacy of Fox News, Fair and Balanced, where truth and fact take the wayside, as long as both sides are treated “fairly.” Like Krugman (I believe it was him) said, with the way news is, we get headilnes like “World Flat? Opinions Differ.”
They can’t fact check, because they refuse to truly recognize fact, because otherwise, that wouldn’t be ‘balanced’.
Anne Laurie
“They” are relying on the old maxim, “A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”
With the flying-buttress reinforcement of the Groucho defence: “Who are you gonna believe — me, or your own lying eyes?”
kid bitzer
hey dougj, can i suggest a correction to your post?
you write:
“the perpetuation of cherished myths, like the story that Al Gore invented the internet.”
the myth that damaged gore unfairly, and that needed correcting, was not:
“the story that al gore invented the internet”.
instead, the myth that needed to be beaten back was:
“the story that al gore ***claimed to have*** invented the internet.”
the way you have it phrased now, it looks like there was this terrible myth being propagated by the media, the myth that al gore invented the internet. and it looks like you are claiming that the media really should have fought against that story that al gore invented the internet.
but, as you know, that’s not how it worked at all. what the media kept repeating was a different myth, the myth that he had **claimed** to invent it.
and i’m sorry to say this, but i think the way you have your post framed actually makes it look as though you are repeating the same mistake, i.e. that what the media really needed to do was to knock down this myth that he had invented it.
anyhow–show us how easy it is to correct a post, would ya?
AhabTRuler
DougJ@top: Wow, that was fast!
Bill E Pilgrim
The Washington Post has fact checkers and even an Ombudsman who writes columns about how they have these fact checkers and “layers of editing” and so on.
And they publish George Will.
As Richard Nixon said to his dog: “That’s a fact, Checkers”
tim
So regarding Sully and his blogger crimes as touched on in this post, why oh why do John and the other BJ bloggers continue to link to and credit Sully with having some level of credibility? Why not ignore the bastard?
I don’t get it.
AhabTRuler
AhabTRuler
“A href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvYm68dOQ4k”>Shut up, damn it!“
Balconesfault
Blogging, particularly if you leave your comments open and don’t routinely delete oppositional comments or kill the accounts of anyone who disagrees with you, is fact checking.
Perhaps he meant “the conservative bloggers don’t fact-check.”
AhabTRuler
Arrggghhhh! HTML fail!
“Shut up, damn it!“
AhabTRuler
Well, the third time was the charm, but I still want edit back.
Ned Ludd
Back in 2005, Gawker took a look at the factual accuracy of 19 New York Times cultural critics. You would think culture writers would have an easy time being accurate. It’s not like they’re trying to report on 1,000-page health care legislation (with multiple, ever-changing versions) or predicted multipliers for different types of economic stimulus. For a cultural critic, the basic facts of their article should be pretty accessible and easy to fact-check.
However, 5 of the 19 had corrections appended to 10% or more of their articles. How many blogs have to correct 10% of their posts? Only 3 of the 19 writers had fewer than 5% of their stories corrected. They are being paid to write for a prestigious national newspaper about topics without a lot of controversy over the basic facts; this many stories with a mistake is just ridiculous. These aren’t college essays they’re writing, or articles for the high school newspaper.
In the case of Alessandra Stanley’s famous Walter Cronkite article — which she started work on almost a month before his death — five different editors read the piece before it was published. Yet it ended up with seven different errors. This isn’t a problem with Stanley — this is a problem with the Times.
Not to mention, if the Times cares about factual accuracy, why does Stanley still have a job, given her record?
AhabTRuler
I don’t know. I have personally posited that many come from where Sully was/is/continues to be, and that to cut him would be to cut themselves, but I don’t really know.
Mike P
Since I know our dear host, John Cole, just took Matt Welch to the shed a a day or so ago, I thought I’d pass this one. Welch takes to the op-ed page of the New York Post (!) to decry Hussein Obama X’s attempts to add us all to his glorious, mixed race harem.
Bill E Pilgrim
@AhabTRuler:
Well, he comes from the UK. Are you saying that people from England are self-mutilators?
Or did I get the facts wrong.
kid bitzer
thanks, dougj.
it gets your point across better now, i think.
General Winfield Stuck
@Balconesfault:
Right wing facts are always true by definition.
AhabTRuler
@Bill E Pilgrim:
AhabTRuler
Assume all is in blockquote for the previous post.
Martin
Newspapers and magazines have trouble getting factual details correct because they are wholly constrained by column-inches. If you need an extra sentence to really make something factually clear, too fucking bad. They all hate this reality, but that’s the reality of print pubs. It’s also the reality of TV and to a lesser degree radio. Sooner or later you have to cut to a commercial, even if it means doing so without the correct information being fully disseminated *even when you know the facts*.
Bloggers have the upper hand here – there are no such artificial constraints on the web. If you need to take 11 pages to get the facts properly listed, and 140 links as references, that’s cool. You just need to be willing to commit the time and listen to the 11 jillion comment bitches about ‘wall of text’.
From the perspective of someone dealing with these constraints, recognizing that those constraints are out of their hands, bloggers as a group probably do look pretty lazy. They have the perfect medium to get it all right and a shitton of them don’t. The ones that do often (but not always) do so only by community involvement – and that might involve wading through a 130-odd comments about kittehs, skull-fucking, hairy armpits, and the like.
From the perspective of a blogger, the guys in traditional media with its stupid fucking constraints look like a bunch of lazy jackasses because they’ll close a show with some lie dropped and 23 hours later, when they are back on the air, they’re onto some other topic and the lie lingers.
notjenna
A current mendacious meme being flogged all over the place is the reconciliation/nuclear option conflation. While one expects FauxNews to repeat it early and often (and they do) it made an appearance on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday when Juan Williams blithely said…
…and Scott Simon let’s it slide as if it’s somehow true. Fortunately there’s some good pushback in the comments over there and Benen and MMA, among others, are all over it but whether a correction is done remains to be seen.
But it’s just another small example of how, even on the far, far, far, left NPR, the truth is on holiday and probably getting very depressed and drunk as it watches its good name being trashed in the emmessemm every single day.
Xenos
@AhabTRuler: I refuse to acknowledge you ex poste facto blockquote, and offer a blank stare in return.
El Cid
Speaking of alternative media, here’s a great online interview from KPFA radio (Berkeley, CA, listener sponsored, not NPR) about dissident magazine Ramparts.
(It’s also preceded by a great interview with Chris Hedges about the Iraq war and its selling and pernicious effects.)
Anyway, the Ramparts interview starts at 1 hr 18 minutes into the 3 hour Sunday Sedition program.
In the ancient days before bloggers, yes, people who really needed what major news media promised it could yield had to seek out alternatives, particularly when it came to questioning the pre-Tet media treatment of the U.S. war against Indochina:
David Horowitz also had been an editor, and after playing at being a Black Panther auxiliary until that ego stuffing game ended badly, he decided he’d be better off raving at college campuses how deadly the ideas of the left were, given what they had seduced him into doing.
El Cid
Oops — link to the streaming / download page for the Ramparts interview.
General Winfield Stuck
@AhabTRuler:
Format hell is Hell.
Bill E Pilgrim
@AhabTRuler:
I knew that.
I was just making a joke.
I was reading a book last night about the wits of Paris of the Belle Epoque “cutting” each other and making great sport of it, the whole acknowledging/not thing.
Great book BTW, one of my favorites:
amazon.com/Elegant-Grand-Horizontals-Cornelia-Skinner/dp/9997549872
El Cid
@El Cid: Only the 2 paragraphs after the floating gray bar were quotes from Wikipedia on Ramparts. The last para was mine.
AhabTRuler
@General Winfield Stuck: Can’t we go back to the good old days where we were still in formatting hell, but at least we had edit?
Bill E Pilgrim
This is the only blog I read in which instruction manuals are provided to read the comments.
Janet Strange
Whenever the topic is “Why is the corporate media dying?” the first thing that pops into my head is:
Link?
We all got used to seeing that in comments when we first started hanging out in blogs – now it’s pretty much assumed that one needs to provide links to back up claims or to remind people of background, history, etc. so you don’t see it as much. We provide links out of habit – both bloggers and commenters on blogs.
I cancelled my newspaper subscriptions when I realized that I was frustrated by the lack of links on paper. Stories would just assert things – things I was doubtful of, or things I wanted to know more about, and . . . .? Nothin’.
Links are “fact-checks.” Matthews and his ilk have had this backward about who fact-checks and who doesn’t for a long time and they still don’t get it. They thought all they had to do was put their stuff on the web and allow comments (most of which – on newspaper’s sites – are from insane people and add nothing).
We don’t trust them, and one reason is the lack of links – and more importantly, what links imply: I’ve done my research, you can verify the background for yourself, you can learn more.
They still want to feed us only what they think we ignorant masses should know, spun the way their corporate masters want it spun. More and more people aren’t buying it anymore and their bottom lines show it.
Ash Can
@freelancer: That’s some kinda ugly, all right.
And then there’s this one. My husband and his work pals actually saw this on one of the financial news channels.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Janet Strange: They thought all they had to do was put their stuff on the web and allow comments (most of which – on newspaper’s sites – are from insane people and add nothing).
Is that ever the truth. Most newspapers just tack on comments sections and then provided near-zero moderation, reputation, anything, and then when it fills up with screaming people who haven’t taken their meds, spammers, you name it, the newspapers just point to as proof of the difference between “the Internet” and their lofty tradition of print.
Uh, that’s not “the Internet”, I always want to respond, that’s your half-assed and utterly incompetent attempt to take part in it. Big difference.
The Washington Post is the poster child for this that I’m thinking of, firing its best online columnist, engaging in minimal moderation of comments, and in general just not getting the whole tubes thing.
Anne Laurie
@Mike P: Wow, that is one amazing (anal) Sacful O’ Shite, even by glibertarian standards. Among Matt Welsh’s “Top 10 Obama Government Grabs”? Number 2 is ‘the Omnibus’, which he immediately admits is a Bush holdover; Numbers 3, 4, 5, and 9, 10 haven’t happened yet; and Number 8, FDA regulation of tobacco, “will keep safer tobacco products off the market while imposing onerous marketing restrictions.” That leaves the dreaded Stimulus, “making government the nation’s largest employer”; the ‘Pay Czar’ “to review the top salaries of executives at firms receiving bailout money. This will surely debase their global competitiveness.”; and “Turning Pell Grants into an entitlement”, which will “make the federal government the last big provider of student loans in America”.
These are all things that make Glibertarians angry, but the overlap between ‘Americans’ and the “I’m All Right, Jack, F— You Party” is hardly seamless, even after 30+ years of the Rethuglican Kleptocracy force-feeding it to the Media Village Idiots.
Left Coast Tom
I’m not sure what’s complex about the error wherein the _Times_ allowed Miller to be a stenographer for Scooter Libby. It seems like they simply failed to insist their reporters practice any sort of journalism.
If we’re comparing the _Times_ to the _WaPo_ then sure, that’s no contest, the _Times_ is far and away better. I’m just not sure how much that says for the level of basic factual accuracy in the _Times_, versus the basic factual inaccuracy in the _Post_.
geg6
Anne Laurie; Don’t get me started on making all student loans Direct loans. I’ve worked in student aid for 15 years and worked with first FFELP loans (federal loans originated and administered by lenders like Sallie Mae) and now only Direct Loans. The US Department of Education does a better, more efficient job, is faster, and is less complicated than the lenders. Hands down. Bad enough alternative educational loans have to exist because students can’t borrow enough from the feds because of ridiculous artificial limits, but the greedheads who are the vulture-like lenders of private loans make money and increase costs of the FFELP loans. And please, someone explain why it makes sense to have two parallel loan programs with the same products but one of which costs more and that cost is the profit that goes to a predatory lender like Sallie Mae. /end of wonky specialized rant
wasabi gasp
I’m flawless. If I have to acknowledge my mistakes, then people will get the wrong impression about me.
Anne Laurie
@Martin:
You make a good point. For all our quite reasonable bitching about the Media Villagers wasting resources on trivia, letting lies go unrebutted, etc., I can attest that even blogging on a regular and timely basis ain’t so easy as it looks. (Mandatory pre-emptive snipe: So can my unfortunate readers.) Finding good information that’s also useful information, and getting an angle on it beyond “what he said” or “heh. indeed.” is a genuine skill — and like all skills, its best practitioners make it look easier than it is. (For our daily John Cole, much thanks.)
Also undervalued, in my opinion, is the way that a good comment section improves the usefulness of a blog, not just in the negative sense of fact-checking and pomposity-puncturing, but by adding further information and new insights on a topic. Theoretically, this has always been possible for ‘old media’ venues as well — but there’s a huge difference between getting a letter to the editor, which will be published days (in the case of magazines, months) after the original article, and being able to read a good meaty post, plus 2 corrections, 3 different angles, and 6 new sources on the topic in question that makes it worth slogging through the inevitable trolls, clue-seekers, and we-are-the-chorus-and-we-agree cheerleaders.
jwb
@Janet Strange: Yes, and I’ve noticed how thorough Frank Rich’s linking usually is on his column.
Cervantes
The most succinct response to Chris Matthews pretending to worry about fact-checking is to point and laugh — uproariously.
No actual words need be spoken.
Anne Laurie
@geg6:
Because, in Matt Welch’s world, The Invisible Hand of the Free Market ! ! ! trumps mere utility, much less the needs of the students looking for an education. Not to mention, if smart dedicated Poors are permitted to take seats in our vaunted institutes of higher learning, how will the Legacy Babies like Dubya ever get the credentials to spend the rest of their lives expensively slacking off and/or fvcking up?
Left Coast Tom
@Martin:
I could understand that, but that would be preferable to the _NYT_ allowing Miller to drop some lie, then the next time around being onto another rewording of the very same lie. Finally, years later, coming out with some “we’re all at fault” nonsense.
Or the _WaPo_ responding to George Will doing the very same thing by bitching that those who object to his lies aren’t “taking on his arguments”. Even if they’re based on lies, and therefore unsupported.
kay
@notjenna:
I just think Juan Williams is wrong. I don’t think anyone will care, at all, what the total vote count is, if it’s passed. I don’t think anyone but pundits are interested in process.
You remember the wild riots and loss of moral authority President Bush had to deal with regarding his huge expansion of Medicare, with the prescription drug plan, right?
Yeah, me neither.
Chris
OT but sf author charlie stross has some interesting comments on the release of the lockerbie bomber and the american healthcare debate….
antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/08/merciless.html#more
ellaesther
I think that there are two basic problems at work here, not just one:
1) There is a real failure to take responsibility — in the media, in government, and generally in society — for one’s errors. (I would add that there is an even greater unwillingness to occasionally say the three most frightening words in the English language, to wit: “I don’t know.”)
But also 2) Everybody generalizes all the time! (See what I did there? See?) But I mean it: There is far too much generalization about The Other Side of almost any argument. In the MSM vs. blogoshpere argument, saying “bloggers don’t fact check” is about as accurate as saying, I don’t know, “mechanics overcharge.” Some do, some don’t. Many bloggers are contributing enormously to the shared conversation — others are assholes, and/or are writing about their cat (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Many in the MSM are continuing to do an excellent job in very difficult times — some are assholes, or wouldn’t know a fact check if it bit her on the arm (not that I’m thinking of anyone in particular. Or anything). I, for one, used to be a moron about bloggers, but thanks to a patient, blog-reading husband, I’ve seen the light. I WAS WRONG. See, world? That didn’t hurt hardly at all, I swear.
The desire for simplicity and clarity is so powerful. If we know everything, are never wrong, and can describe those with whom we disagree in clear-cut, no-two-ways-about-it language, our lives are easier. Not more honest, not more likely to achieve any essential truth, but easier. Or so we seem to believe.
bellatrys
@Martin:
You would owe me a keyboard if I hadn’t gotten a keyboard cover to protect against just such incidents.
Corner Stone
@Xenos: Now that’s just plain rude.
bellatrys
@Janet Strange:
Word – this was the thing that drove me crazy trying to educate myself via hard-copy in the libraries as a teenager – there was so much STUFF just being asserted and counter-asserted and all of it claimed as fact, and so many ObRefs being dropped with no way to easily find out what the hell was being referred to, even with hours of free time during the slow days at the library to dig through tons of old newspapers and microfilms and whatever I could lay hands on. It was a combination of information-overload and disinformation overload, and the more I read the more I realized I didn’t, couldn’t know – but that BOTH the beliefs of our wingnutty little circle AND the sort of mainstream middle-of-the-road pablum being taught at school as “history” were simply dead wrong.
I’m still working on figuring it all out(TM) but blogs have given me a whole lot more tools, as have google. The reason I pretty much abandoned US news sites for the BBC even before 9/11 – recognizing that the BBC has its own biases and issues – was that unlike most US sites the Beeb has always had this crazy belief in hyperlinking every possible relevant bit of stuff on their website for every story, making it a whole lot easier to understand what’s going on…
The Other Steve
Actually Marc Ambinder has apologized… sort of. He’s not willing to admit personal fault, but he did acknowledge he was wrong.
Mike P
I actually worked as a fact checker at a major city magazine this summer and I can tell you that we went to great lengths (some might even say annoying lengths) to make sure what we were asserting was based in fact. We’d argue for days over literally one sentence and its formulation.
To speak directly to something Yglesias mentioned, I had to fact check an excerpt from a book that we were running. There were several notable factual errors or omissions that we had to correct…but this was after the fact; the book had already been published. I have to say I was pretty shocked.
Back to newspapers for a sec: I wrote a post on True/Slant a month or so ago in the wake of Sarah Palin’s atrocious op-ed on cap and trade and Martin Feldstein’s grossly misleading and factually challenged piece on health care, both of which ran in the WaPo (draw you own conclusions). Most papers leave it to the reporters to check their own work but there are generally several editors for op-ed pages and letting outright lies go into the paper (and then not correcting them) is dereliction of duty, plain and simple.
In our current media hierarchy, I think you’re most safe with magazines and blogs (because of the almost real time fact checking in terms of the later) then newspapers.
JK
@The Other Steve:
Marc Ambinder drooled all over the teabaggers when they held their stupid rallies on Apirl 15th and blasted Janet Napolitano for the DHS report on right wing extremism.
He can take his apology and shove it right up his fat ass.
JK
Not only Youtube, Google, and Lexis Nexis but also Dialog and Factiva (the 2 main rivals of Nexis) as well as Factcheck.org, Politifact, Congressional Research Service Reports and many online databases available free of charge at the local public library.
Martin
That’s entirely fair, but I think it’s a symptom (one that needs to be fixed) of the column-inch problem. Since *nobody* at the Times or Post can squeeze the extra column-half-inch, why bother trying? The fact that they can’t fit isn’t really any more valuable than the fact they don’t know about – so why pay for the factchecker.
I’m not saying it’s in any way right, but those are the kinds of business decisions that play out every day. And when people are fleeing traditional media in droves, you’re forced to fire the factchecker in lieu of another ad sales rep just to keep the place running another year.
We can complain about the Times or the WaPo having shitty news, but then there probably aren’t that many here actually paying for it other than ad views. Maybe if the Times had 3-armed Pam, the schnauzer with a fork in the head, and single,
hornypious, christian filipinos they could get more of our attention and turn that ship around, but all I ever see is AmEx and Microsoft. [yawn]Left Coast Tom
@Martin:
The factchecker could have helped save them column-inches by not running the lies to begin with.
I think, fundamentally, they’ve developed an extremely warped view of whom they should trust and whom they shouldn’t, and are passing that along to the public. I think they’re failing at their self-claimed role of gatekeeper.
1) They sell articles and op-eds to papers around the country…my _SF Chronicle_ subscription is paying for some of this nonsense.
2) Ad views have always been their business model – it worked somewhat better for them on paper than online, but nonetheless…
To me this is a problem because major papers have resources that can, and should, be devoted to investigative journalism. Other media lack these resources. But if the resources are, instead, going to be paid to “star “journalists”” then the possible public benefit of these resources is simply theoretical.
Janet Strange
@Anne Laurie:
And that’s the other important thing that old media doesn’t have. Journalists are generalists – they know a little about a lot (even if they specialize in a certain area) but there are thousands of people who know more about something specific.
These other people pop up in comments adding hugely valuable additional information, because say, they’ve spent their entire career studying that or work in that field, but they aren’t journalists. They have other jobs. But they do have time to post a comment.
Say someone writes about the problems of student loan policies in a general way, and lo and behold, we get to hear the perspective of someone who actually spends their days working with the students and their families that have to deal with the consequences of those policies. Or you’re reading about the housing bust and before you know it there’s a developer or a carpenter explaining how they see it. NASA funding – before you know it there’s “Well, I’m an engineer at NASA, and . . . “
Corner Stone
@JK: JK – can I just say you have been on FIRE the last coupla threads.
Corner Stone
@Janet Strange: I like the idea you present, and I largely agree with what you’re saying here.
However, that model would still be vulnerable to argument by authority, as well as sockpuppetry.
I in fact know several people from NASA (for example), and to a man they are the nuttiest damn winger assholes you’ve ever met who I wouldn’t trust to start my backyard grill, much less take their word on the specs for a spaceship to break orbit.
But I do like the way you’re thinking on a kind of pooled intelligence to fact check MSM – kind of like zerohedge or calculatedrisk for financial thoughts, etc.
Mike P
@Janet Strange:
It’s often been said at my j-school that the job of journalists is to be experts at finding the experts.
JK
@Corner Stone:
Lest I forget. FUCK THE NEW YORK YANKEES.
jl
“But in the age of google, YouTube, and Lexis Nexis, it’s tough to convince people that you’re always right.”
It certainly has been tough for them, and it has taken over eight long years, but the corporate media has finally convinced me that they are always wrong.
Bush’s tax and economic lies during 2000 campaign, WMD, Iraq, GWOT, torture, and lots more. I think the worthless and disonest garbage they’ve been spewing on health reform finally did it. I do not believe a word that the corporate media says. Nothing. I just assume they said whatever they need to for some money some bigwig gave/is giving/will give them.
I feel like I have to fact check every ‘and’ and ‘the’ in their stories now (to steal a famous trope from Mary McCarthy).
DougJ
@Mike P
Thanks for the inside dope. Always good to hear from someone who’s dealt with the issue firsthand.
Martin
And I think, fundamentally, most of us have developed an extremely warped view of what newspapers are. They’re Burger King, but they sell paper instead of whoppers. You think Burger King worries much about whom they should trust and whom they shouldn’t? I think they worry a lot more about revenues than anything else. I think the NYTimes and WaPo does too.
The journalists worry about entirely different things, but there’s a LOT of people between them and the delivery boy – especially at a place like the Times and the Post. Not so much at your local paper, which is probably why they suck so much less.
Janet Strange
@Martin: I don’t think they sell papers – they sell us. We’re the “eyeballs” that they sell to advertisers.
Corner Stone
@Martin: I’m 35 yrs old and I can not tell you the first or last time I grabbed a real old school paper edition of a paper and read an article in it.
They ain’t selling shit to me or through me.
mclaren
Everyone remembers Tom “sh*t-for-brains” Firedman’s “Suck. On. This.” column but no one remembers when Friedman really went insane.
September 13. Tom “haven’t-got-a-clue” Friedman announces America is in the middle of WW III.
No, I am not kidding.
Here’s the link. Read Friedman’s drooling insanity for yourself:
Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead.”
Right.
A handful of kooks crash two planes into two skyscrapers, and that’s World War III.
What a moron. Here’s World War III, Friedman: global thermonuclear war. 1.2 billion people dead. Entire continents aflame, ruins as far as the eye can see across North America and Europe and Russia. Clouds of radioactive death killing millions of people. Nuclear winter for 6 months, no grows will grow, subzero temperatures. Mass starvation. Fallout. Radiation 6 inches deep on the topsoil. 80% of all animal life on earth dead.
Compared to…two skyscrapers blown up.
Is Tom Friedman drunk, brain-damaged or just on hard drugs? When he was born, did he go through the Express Lane at birth — 15 IQ POINTS OR LESS?
Corner Stone
@mclaren:
Good. Sweet. Lord. You kiss your mother with that mouth?
Anne Laurie
@Corner Stone:
I’m just about exactly a generation ahead of you (53), and I still buy the Boston Sunday Globe in hard copy every week. Mostly, to be honest, for the local sales flyers and coupons — but I do enjoy reading the articles, during spare moments, over the course of the week.
The New York Times literally weaned me off my 25-year-long daily paper addiction. They bought the Globe with the intention of “destroying” its usefulness to readers, who would surely switch to the NYT rather than the tabloid Boston Herald (the Herald is a lower-IQ version of the NY Post). So, apart from viciously slashing newsroom staff and starting an ongoing war of attrition with the Globe unions, the NYT not only boosted the cost of home delivery, they moved the guaranteed-delivery time from 7am to 9am… i.e., well after most commuters left their homes each day. When *that* didn’t work well, or badly, enough — I wasn’t the only person who cancelled my automatic delivery service and started buying my paper at the commuter rail station — they stopped stocking the vending boxes until well after the morning commute. And from what I was hearing at the local convenience stores, the NYT business jeen-yuses also started enforcing a raft of new rules about taking back unsold copies, pre-assembling the weekly inserts, selling ‘early edition’ Sunday papers after 11pm on Saturday… just generally making it a PITA to sell or buy the Globe, while pushing the NYT national edition at every turn.
Unfortunately, as it got harder to find my hard-copy Globe, it got easier to get my information fix on-line. First I switched to a subscription service for the daily comics, and paid them extra for the crossword-and-jigsaw-puzzle site as well. Then I started surfing the news sites, which led me to the political blogs, which left less time for reading the pulp version cover-to-cover. So — for all their efforts — the Sulzbergers have managed to lose someone who *should* have been un-loseable, while simultaneously alienating me from EVER buying a paper copy of the NYTimes. (I still read them online, but I’ve never paid them directly for that and will never do so.) And I’m sure there are thousands of fellow former Globe readers, most of them from my generation or older, in much the same situation.
bellatrys
@Martin:
That’s entirely fair, but I think it’s a symptom (one that needs to be fixed) of the column-inch problem. Since nobody at the Times or Post can squeeze the extra column-half-inch, why bother trying? The fact that they can’t fit isn’t really any more valuable than the fact they don’t know about – so why pay for the factchecker.
Martin, I worked for almost 3 years as part of the SLCM, for an indy paper, and I can tell you that the reason they don’t squeeze it in is because they don’t have any regard for the content, at all. Reporters and editors *might* but the owners don’t – they cynically refer to the content – that which makes people buy papers, right? You’d think, wouldn’t you? – as “fill.”
That’s right.
The stories and features are just filler for the *really* important part of the paper, the ads. That’s the only thing the owners care about, and they *jeer loudly* at the idea that anyone cares about the stories and features. (Also at poor people, including their own employees, for being such suckers as to be poorly-paid workers, btw, which does wonders for staff morale.)
Cart behind the horse, I know – people don’t buy papers (or anything) to read ads, they buy for the content and the idea is that they will happen to read the ads and be hooked into spending money on those goods and services as a result.
But they butcher stories down to incoherence, run idiot features because they won’t spend the money to research good ones, DIRECTLY ORDER STAFF LIKE ME TO NOT “WASTE TIME” FACT CHECKING or even making sure that a paragraph isn’t cut off in the middle of a sentence and pack their pages with wire copy because it’s easier (NOT cheaper, btw) than having reporters report &c – and *then* they wonder why fewer and fewer people are reading, and thus fewer and fewer advertisers are buying paper real estate which is less and less valuable as it loses eyeball traffic.
So they cut more staff and run more sloppy, error-ridden crap and pack the holes with still more syndicated copy…
Rinse, repeat. (Fred Clark of Slacktivist is *still* working for a big chain paper and has described the effects on the newsroom, but it isn’t any different from what I saw in our small-town indy rag.)
Cerberus
@Martin: Sorry for the wayback comment, but this bothered me. I’m in the process of getting my master’s in biology and thus have spent a bit of time reading and helping my professors write scientific papers. Now, what most people might not know is that scientific papers have insane constraints. Some big papers like Nature sometimes require papers to be only a couple hundred words and all have very specific style constraints that vary between publications.
But the professors produce good work that fits the constraints while communicating really complex issues and the same is true for humanities professors publishing in their journals (in fact, the constraints are usually worse there). Journalists are paid and trained to do one aspect above all else, communicate the relevant information in the constraints and with the web and other resources, they have room for nearly infinite supplementals if they for instance want to prove a claim. Rachel Maddow has a TV show and does this all the time when she’s pointing out something wonky and people want to look at her primary source.
Their failures are due to laziness because they are paid a good deal of money to do that job in those constraints and have apparently reached that elite level completely incapable of it.
AllenS
But what puzzles me most is the unwillingness of opinion writers to admit they were wrong about things like the Iraq war.
It’s because at the time they believed the WMD claim. They had been listening to Clinton, Gore, Kerry, to name a few. They all claimed that Iraq had WMD. Go to Google, and try this:
Clinton WMD
Gore WMD
Kerry WMD
They are not going to admit that these people misled them. Sure, it’s easy to bash Bush, but the whole Iraq WMD claim goes back farther than when Bush decided to invade.
General Winfield Stuck
@AllenS:
The only thing that mattered in the Iraq war runnup, was did Iraq still have wmd. And what kind. Bush promised to let the inspectors finish their jobs, and make that call. And every shred of evidence coming from their work in early 2003 pointed toward no, there were no active wmd programs and hadn’t been for years. Bush broke that promise and invaded anyway, and the rest is history. The inspectors were right and Bush was tragically wrong. A lot of people died for an impatient brat whoring for war.
Ron Cantrell
Matthews is one to talk. He routinely lets rightwingers spew the biggest lies around, and he says “Right”. He seems to be afraid to contradict them.
David Crisp
“Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Fact checkers take notice: Actually, that was Chico.