I’m kind of shocked that an institution that weekly publishes the climate lies of George Will is doing this:
The Washington Post has suspended veteran sports columnist Mike Wise for publishing fabricated information on Twitter. He announced the one-month suspension on his radio show Tuesday.
Wise claimed Monday that he wanted to prove a point about how reporters will run stories in today’s fast-moving news environment without independently verifying the information. So Wise tweeted that Pittsburgh Steelers star Ben Roethlisberger, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a Georgia college student, would get a five-game suspension. Of course, since Wise is a respected sportswriter, other news outlets went with apparent scoop and cited his reporting.
***Wise wrote on Twitter after the incident that he’s “an idiot” and offered “apologies to all involved.” But the columnist still didn’t appear to grasp just why Twitter users (including other journalists) assume respected journalists are publishing accurate information on the medium. “I was right about nobody checking facts or sourcing,” he added along with Monday’s apology.
And when Calderone writes this: “But the columnist still didn’t appear to grasp just why Twitter users (including other journalists) assume respected journalists are publishing accurate information on the medium,” he kind of misses Wise’s point about no one ever fact checking anything.
Daddy-O
So, I forget…which new technology is the proper one for reporting journalism, and which one is for simple conversational bullshitting?
It’s hard being this old…
JR
One of the professors at my school made this same point about unverified claims circulating freely, to great effect: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/03/anatomy-of-a-rumor-the-story-behind-chief-justice-john-robertss-retirement/
martha
@Daddy-O: LOL. You expect them to figure out their jobs at this point? They’re idiots. Most of them anyway.
cleek
lies are expected in politics, not so much in sports.
?
MattR
I think Wise has a good point but went about making it in a bad way (not that I am sure there is any “good” way that will actually result in the point being made)
beltane
Not impressed. If Wise were a political columnist nothing would have happened to him. The media has higher standards for athletes and sports journalists than for politicians and political pundits.
Shinobi
Isn’t there some kind of rule of thumb about having more than one documented source before publishing an article? I mean, i’m sure there are any number of publicists they could have called and gotten a denial. That’s just fucking lazy.
The Commish
As a fantasy footballer with a draft coming up in a few hours – Wise deserves the suspension! And some tar and feathering!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
In a strange sort of way, this reminds me of a political cartoon that came out after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. The top of the panel had this little man being put in prison by two guards. When he’s let out, the man is now a giant. And one of the guards goes “We showed him.”
These are equivalent only in that the “guards” are totally missing the point.
The Commish
@ John Cole
Could you post that text I emailed yesterday? The one with all the draft tips, and the link to the 4th conference. I’ll paste it below here, but the first draft is coming up in ~9 hours and I’m thinking that info should be on the front page for people to see. I won’t bother you with such requests too often….maybe once/week through the season.
——
The first draft of the BJFL 2010 season, for managers in the ancient, founding, old-school (since Friday!) Elitist Conference, is Tuesday evening. Other conferences will draft in coming days…..check your conference homepage for your draft time in your particular media market.
Here are The Commish’s tips for all players re the draft, and fantasy play in general:
– Drafting your own team is fun, but not necessary. Yahoo does a decent job of drafting for you, if you can’t be online for the draft or would rather trust Yahoo’s “experts.” You can start off drafting for yourself the first few rounds, then let Yahoo take over.
– If you want to draft yourself, DO test compatibility of your system with Yahoo’s draft applet, long before the draft. The link to test is on your league homepage.
– If you want to draft yourself, DO log on early, at least 15-20 minutes early. In years past Yahoo’s draft app has been buggy and very slow to load. (It’s still the best free online fantasy host I’ve found)
– Whether you plan to draft yourself or not, DO rank your favorite players up to at least # 20 using Yahoo’s pre-draft rankings. [From your conference’s homepage look for DRAFT CENTRAL then PRE-DRAFT RANKINGS.] If you let Yahoo draft for you, this will make the computer use your preferences. If you plan to draft yourself but are called away or have tech issues on draft day, you’ll be somewhat protected.
– If you start off drafting yourself then want to let Yahoo take over, PLEASE log out of Yahoo when you’ve lost interest in the draft. If you stay logged in but are viewing Balloon Juice or the Weather Channel or pretty girls or boys or goats in another browser window when your next turn comes up, Yahoo will make everybody else in the draft wait several minutes before picking for you. And all of us still interested in the draft will hate you, forever.
Sometime after the draft is over I, in the most solemn act I will perform as commissioner, will hit a button labelled “Begin Play.” It might be up to 24 hours after the draft, depending. After that, but BEFORE NFL PLAY BEGINS ON 9/9, all players need to post their rosters. Log into Yahoo, go to your team and drag ‘n’ drop the players you want to start for week 1 into their positions. And SAVE changes. Yahoo will NOT automatically move your top draft picks into starting positions, and awards no points for players on the bench.
Looking past week 1, it is always up to the manager to move players from the bench to starting positions to cover vacancies due to injuries and bye weeks. Yahoo will not move any players on your roster, period.
Waivers and trades are a big part of fantasy football. All players who go undrafted will be available for waiver pickup; after NFL week 1 waiver priority will be assigned based on won-lost record within a conference (worst record gets first priority). For every player you pick up, you’ll need to drop one.
Looking far into the future….. teams in each conference are playing to win that conference by NFL week 14. The top team in each conference in NFL week 14 will advance to the BJFL fantasy playoffs. There will be 2 playoff games in NFL week 15, featuring the winners of the Elitist Conference vs the Murricans, and the Blue Dogs vs Tunch’s Sandbox. In NFL week 16 we will have the BJFL Super Bowl featuring the winners of the two playoff games.
Prizes? Who asked about prizes? If you did you should check the league at Reason.com, where players are driven only by Randian greed. We’re playing for pride, and for the acclimation that, Yes, WE are the most football savvy amongst the football savvy millions at Balloon Juice!
Also, there’s a T-shirt. I will personally put up a T-shirt for the final Super Bowl champion, sporting the message:
Winner! The BEST!
B-J FANTASY
2010
As long as you promise to wear it with pride.
Looking way, wayy, wayyyyy too far ahead…. FSM willing that I’m here to commissionerate again in 2011 and you all don’t fire me before then, I will run a 14-team head-to-head league next year and invite the top teams from each of this year’s conferences to participate. So you’ve got that.
Is anybody out there still saying: Fantasy Football? Why didn’t I hear about all this? We have a few spots still open in the fourth and final conference:
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/register/tos?league_id=637772&password=alsotoo
When this conference is full we’ll have 53 Balloonists knocking virtual heads this fall. Good luck to all of you!
– The Commish
YankeeApologist
I’m actually kind of proud of this guy Wise. It runs a fine line in terms of slandering Roethlisberger, but since when is Twitter the source for hard journalism?
/Americagoingtohellinahandbasket
MattR
I will repost this link to a fun way to talk smack in your fantasy football league.
@YankeeApologist: Is stating that his suspension will be reduced by only one game instead of the widely assumed two, really that close to slander?
YankeeApologist
@MattR:
MattR, I just read this:
I am not a football fan, and didn’t know that five games was less than he was supposed to be getting. I didn’t even know he was getting suspended.
There I go, not fact-checking. /Fail
YankeeApologist
@MattR:
MattR, I just read this:
I am not a football fan, and didn’t know that five games was less than he was supposed to be getting. I didn’t even know he was getting suspended.
There I go, not fact-checking. /Fail
flukebucket
Who will fact check the fact checkers?
MobiusKlein
So…. Sexually assaulting a woman gets you a suspension of about a month,
and lying about a suspension gets you a month’s suspension as well.
Nice moral equivalence here.
Just Some Fuckhead
Journalist reports untrue story to reveal that journalists report untrue stories.
Hmm.
sukabi
kind of missed the point??? to use some sports metaphors:
he missed it by a mile
bottom of the ninth, opposition leads 1-0, bases are loaded, batter up, 3 balls, 2 strikes and the batter strikes out, game over, you LOSE.
last lap of the Indy 500, you’re leading by 3 car lengths and you blow 2 tires…
The Commish
@MattR: That’s funny, thanks! I’ll probably use that in my non-BJ league.
MattR
@YankeeApologist: Ah. I assumed you knew the context. He was suspended for six games with the possibility of it being reduced to four based on his behavior. He has a meeting with the Commissioner this week and everyone assumes that the suspension will be reduced to the four game minimum.
sven
Wise is asking whether journalists should be willing to publish stories based on nothing more than hearsay. That the hearsay comes from an established journalist is beside the point, it is still just hearsay until you have outside confirmation.
Calderone’s response is that hearsay is a perfectly acceptable standard… if the source is a ‘serious-person’. We all know the incentives created by this situation. When the standard becomes ‘it sounded good to me’ the only limit to what politically-motivated insiders can push is the gullibility or connivance of reporters.
Does anyone think there would have been a suspension if the source had been a politico with an agenda rather than Mike Wise’s brain? Do we have any reason to believe, absent additional evidence, that the rumor would have been closer to reality?
In the end, Wise is being punished, not because his story was nonsense, but because he admitted how he was playing the game.
trueblood
So please tell me, why is it that Twitter users assume everyone is posting accurate information on the medium?
J.W. Hamner
It’s a weird point to make I think. Did everybody watching the Lebron saga over twitter this summer think “ZOMG! He’s going to Chicago! No wait! He’s going to New York! He’s changed his mind again! It’s Miami!” They realized it was all just speculation and rumors, right? Would anyone have been shocked if Wise hadn’t lied but just got bad info?
Paul L.
So Bill Maher was right about Brazil?
Steve
Wise doesn’t have a point. The subject matter of his tweet was highly credible and he doesn’t have a reputation as someone who just makes stuff up – until now, at least.
If he had tweeted that Drew Brees was going to announce his retirement and everyone repeated the rumor, maybe then he has a point about people being gullible. But five games for Roethlisberger is totally believable. Are journalists really supposed to say “gee, I can’t figure out who Mike Wise’s source is, guess I shouldn’t bother telling the public that a well-known sports journalist is saying five games”? This is not something that can be easily fact-checked. Either you have a source of your own or you don’t.
Medrawt
Isn’t the distinction here that Wise’s comment was the sort of thing that couldn’t be fact checked, which made it a dumb demonstration on his part? If the information he provided was true, given the situation, then it would have to come directly from a source speaking anonymously, or second (or third, fourth, whatever) hand from someone speaking anonymously, because no one would have gone on the record with that information at that time. So I’m not really up on journalistic practices, but how much can you fact check another journalist’s anonymous source? You just write “according to reporting by Mike Wise…”
Unless Wise was trying to make a much larger point about journalistic ethics than the one I took him to be making, this seems more like him being dumb, because he didn’t set up the kind of situation that would prove anything meaningful about gullibility.
Just Some Fuckhead
We’ll have a forum on this at the next blogger ethics panel.
Origuy
@Paul L.: Tell me, where did Bill Maher get his degree in climate science?
Brachiator
It is a well established principle that pundits can post lies. They are above mere reporters, and are very serious people.
Besides, I think that Wise might have got away with his stunt had he informed his editors ahead of time. But apart from this, the Web as a source of baseless rumor mongering is well known. There ain’t no news story there.
lol
@Paul L.:
Even though Maher was wrong, it’s interesting that during the convo, he was open to the idea that he might have gotten it wrong.
Meanwhile, most of the right wing is still pretending Iraq had WMDs.
sven
@Medrawt: A story which is difficult to fact check should draw more scrutiny, not less.
You say:
What if the information is not correct? The public doesn’t just need to be told a story, it needs to be told the truth. Andrew Breitbart did enormous damage to Shirley Sherrod because he presented only a narrow snapshot of her speech. A reported who puts out a story based on a single source, let alone an anonymous or secondhand source, will commit the same sin by default. Sources have their agendas and when they know journalists won’t verify their information, every incentive only encourages bad behavior. Knowing this, any reporter willing to base an entire story only on another writer’s anonymous source is a fool and does a disservice to their readers.
El Cid
@Paul L.: There is no conflict. Brazil’s boost to its ethanol fuel industry for indigenous fuel use is not contradictory to development of massive oil finds for export.
This is the equivalent of ‘if we’s evolved from monkeys then how come’s they’s still monkeys?’.
Geoduck
Ditto previous comments: newspaper sports writers have to actually know their jobs and not make stuff up, because the rubes care about sports.
EFroh
Well it’s sports. That’s serious shit that you don’t mess around with.
Medrawt
sven –
I don’t disagree. Which is why I included the caveat about what point, exactly, Wise had the impression he was making. If Wise was leveling a critique at the culture of reporters falling all over each other to make sure that any “news” available elsewhere was also available on their platform (e.g., the networks calling, and then un-calling, Florida in 2000), or if he was critiquing the whole infrastructure of anonymous sourcing in journalism, then I guess I could see why he’d do what he did, even if it was still a very bad idea.
But my impression – could be mistaken! – is that his target was ultimately smaller and more venal, and that his stunt was therefore not only dumb but poorly executed. If his tweet had been, for example, that the NFL “absolutely will” go to 18 games in the 2012 season, which is an issue under discussion, then other reporters could conceivably call up all sorts of official people who could talk about stuff like that and ask “hey, what changed?” But Wise’s “scoop,” by its nature, was predicated on the idea that he had access to information that no one else had. Which maybe is a bad feature of our media culture, but is totally a real feature of our media culture. Certain journalists have sources in specific organizations that other journalists don’t have (they have other sources in other organizations), and it seems to me like the standards shift for stories predicated on that kind of foundation. What Wise is saying, essentially, is “you’re dumb for believing me when I shared information that I could only have gotten because someone in the NFL front office said things they weren’t supposed to,” when in fact legitimate news stories are broken all the time because some anonymous person said something they weren’t supposed to.
Nutella
Wait, what, tweets based on anonymous sources aren’t reliable? Somebody should check them?
Hoocoodanode?
Kevin Raffay
Twitter is way overrated, and I can’t believe “real” journalists run with stories based on Tweets.
Douglas
Proving once again that football is SRS BUSINESS – unlike, say, politics. Or economics. Or the fate of the earth.
Excuse me while I
+5improve my health.