Please follow the link below to an article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/opinion/18pubed-web.html
After reading the article, discuss how it illustrates the obstacles to journalistic truth-telling that Borden enumerates in her chapter on The Paper in our text. Be as specific as possible.
Your response is due Wednesday, Sept. 15, by 4 p.m. No late responses will be accepted.
Teaching Notes
You must become the flame on the candle. - Thich Nhat Hanh
Monday, September 13, 2010
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Is Media Ethics Education DOA?
It sounds like a joke Jay Leno would tell during his opening monologue on The Tonight Show. Hear about the graduate students at the prestigious journalism school? They got caught cheating on an ethics exam. Ha ha ha. Except that’s actually what happened at Columbia University
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
No one admitted cheating despite pressure from the school’s administrators and pleas from classmates, who feared the scandal would damage the market value of their degrees. Meanwhile, the teacher of the course, New York Times columnist Samuel G. Freedman, refused to comment. But if the disgruntled posts on RateMyProfessors.com are any indication, his students hadn’t exactly been soaking up knowledge. “Maybe he could e-mail his ‘speeches’ to the students instead of making everyone suffer through the most wasted class in j-school. . . ,” one read.
There’s an old cowboy saying that goes, “When your horse dies, get off.” Journalism ethics education is a dead horse. Or else those aren’t vultures circling in the sky.
A Question for Socrates
The question of how ethics is learned, or even if it can be, is as old as Western philosophy. In Plato’s dialog Meno the title character asks, “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?” Of course, Socrates, being Socrates, resists giving a definite answer. But we can’t. The sad fact is, students had better get an effective ethics education now or they may never.
Last summer I conducted an ethics workshop for some reporters and editors at the Poughkeepsie Journal, a small daily in upstate
But what I remember most is the air of defeat that clung to the staff as we sat on hard plastic chairs in the break room discussing the cases. I could hear in their voices the bitterness and cynicism of employees forced to follow corporate policies they despised. Recently, for example, the paper had started running display ads on the front page and section fronts, a much more grievous ethical lapse, their mumbled asides suggested, than anything the case studies might have to offer.
I don’t want my students to ever wear the gray, defeated expression I saw that day on the faces at the Journal. But given the downward direction in which the media are moving, and fast, how in the world can I prevent it from happening?
Teaching Media Ethics by Telling Stories
A friend of mine who teaches at a big Midwestern university recounts in class the events of her first week as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. She was sent to Duluth to cover Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail. When they were introduced, Humphrey vigorously shook her hand. “Oh yes, Susan,” he said, “I read your stuff all the time.” He couldn’t have read her stuff, though; she hadn’t written anything yet. “Just a few words,” she explains to her students, “but words that taught this fledging reporter a great lesson about pols and the little lies they tell.”
I usually find occasion during the semester to quote I. F. Stone’s dictum, “Every government is run by liars and thieves, and nothing they say should be believed,” to make the same point. But Susan’s story makes the point better. That’s because it has existential force. Her story vividly captures in a way a secondhand quote can’t the realities of a reporter’s life.
Some might think telling “war stories” is a waste of precious class time. I’ve a colleague who didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of regaling students with stories ad nauseam (“which, let’s face it, is easier than teaching or grading,” he said). So one semester he kept track. When he toted it all up at the end, he was surprised that he’d used less than an hour - out of 45 – talking about his newspaper experiences. And yet, he admitted, it was his stories that students seemed to remember most.
“Stories teach us how to live,” Daniel Taylor said in his essay, “The Ethical Implications of Storytelling.” What he meant was that stories preserve our experience for contemplation and evaluation. Although not all stories carry a heavy message, there’s an entire category of stories, so-called “exemplary tales,” that are told to convey a moral.
Our war stories are potentially just such tales. They can provide evidence, in ethicist John Barton’s words, of “how real human beings live through various crises and trials and remain human.” My colleague who kept tabs on his storytelling has described his stories as cautionary. Most, he said, deal with “screwups I learned from.”
But sometimes the storyteller and the audience can’t agree on what exactly the moral of a story is.
When Susan was a cub reporter on the Tribune, she interviewed the Beatles, who were on their second tour of the States. She got into their hotel room by dressing up as a waitress in an ugly, mustard-colored uniform and accompanying an actual room service waiter upstairs. Ringo took one look at her little plastic name tag – it read “Donna Brown” – and snorted, “What kind of name is that?” The waiter nudged her in the side. “Tell them what you real name is,” he urged. She did, as well as her reason for being there. Rather than throw her out, the Beatles politely answered her questions. They even let her phone for a photographer. The next day her story ran on the front page, with a photo of John sitting at a table and looking up at her and laughing as she poured coffee in his cup. She still has a glossy print of that photo somewhere.
Many of Susan’s students think she’s nuts for not having the photo hanging up in her office. They also think she’s nuts for saying she’d never participate in the same kind of stunt today. To her celebrity-struck students, disguising herself as a hotel waitress to get an interview with the Beatles seems soooo cool. They lose all sight of the fact that it wasn’t a story of vital public interest that demanded undercover methods.
Susan intends one lesson when she talks about her hard day’s night, but her students, living in a paparazzi-saturated culture, draw another. “It may be a lost cause,” she remarked to me.
Or maybe not. Negotiations over what the point of a story is can be part of the point of the story. In the process of negotiating, we test different interpretations, try out different themes. This is helpful. This is educational. Lawrence Kohlberg, the Harvard psychologist famous for his research on the stages of moral development, contended that “the teaching of virtue is the asking of questions. . . not the giving of answers.” Stories don’t necessarily have to yield clear moral rules to be of value. It’s enough sometimes if they just give us something to think about.
28 comments:
In the chapter The Paper, after citing philosopher Sessela Bok’s standards of truth- Borden continues to say this: “Even this relatively modest standard implies that we will take reasonable care to ensure that we are using appropriate procedures for finding out the truth.” One would assume that journalists at such an esteemed news outlet as the Times would take reasonable care to ensure that they are finding and printing the truth. In the Leaps of Faith article, most of these writers unfortunately did not.
In the case of the phone call, and the faked email, the writers relied mainly on trust and word of mouth rather than follow the steps of checking, and rechecking their information. The issue of deadlines and the issue of competition may in fact create an environment where journalists feel pressured to produce a story first, whatever the cost- even if that cost is botched facts. However as Borden says “deadlines don’t justify filling the news hole with stories that journalists know are misleading or incorrect.” In the world of information we live in today where an article never really disappears among digital archives and web pages, it’s more important than ever to follow the most basic thing we’re taught in journalism school: check, and recheck.
-the rest will be in a second post-
Borden asks- “Are journalism’s procedures for seeking and verifying the truth up to the moral demands of epistemic responsibility?” If epistemic responsibility suggests that some ways of knowing are more responsible than others, I’d say that the journalists in the Times article were fairly irresponsible. Of course, there are many obstacles journalists face today when trying to produce the truth. One of the biggest ones is seen with the faked email article. The internet is a place that allows people to assume whatever identity they choose behind the safety of their screen, and yes, this is a problem when we as journalists are given information for a story. But we all know this, and that makes it all the more important to verify our sources before presenting information as truth.
I think the biggest obstacle for journalists can be summed up in this quote from the chapter: “Truth is tricky. Even from the standpoint of objectivity, any claim to know the truth is tentative and provisional, subject to revision in light of new information.” Whether it be the phone call case, the wild party case, the miners in West Virginia- truth IS tricky. And can change within minutes, and some of the time, information we are given may only be a claim to know the truth- but this is where we come in, and where epistemic responsibility comes in. “To be epistemically responsible, however, journalists should be duly skeptical.”
According to philosopher Sisella Bok there are two types of truth, absolute truth, which is considered to be beyond human reach and truthfulness, which is doing our best to convey what we believe is the truth. This means that we will have gone through all the necessary steps to ensure that our truth is accurate and correct. When applying this theory to the mistakes made by the New York Times, one would say they were quite irresponsible in their journalistic truth-telling process. All three journalists, in all three cases relied on trust and hearsay versus fact; in doing so they neglected their epistemic responsibility and forgot the weight of their words. I believe Reagan had it right when he said, “Trust but verify.”
I don’t think that the journalists referenced in the article acted in a malicious way. They were undoubtedly wrong, and their actions were unacceptable, but I think they are guilty of being overeager more than anything else. As naïve as it may be, I’d like to think that they were really excited about their respective stories, and felt that the “evidence” they were using as proof would make for a great read. Unfortunately, even if it did enhance the story, it made it completely worthless. If a news story does not tell the actual news, and instead spreads fiction posing as fact, it’s useless. It’s important, as journalists, to tell the absolute truth. That means telling not what we think happened, but what we KNOW happened.
Quoting from the kid’s high school paper may have seemed like it would provide a new perspective on an old story, but by not verifying what was true and what was embellished, it calls into question everything the story says. Reagan’s quote about verification makes perfect sense, if only just to protect one’s own integrity.
I have to say, though I realize these mistakes were important and do represent obstacles journalists face, I don't believe they represent the quality of these particular reporters. No matter how good of a reporter you are, one day you will make a slip. Everyone has a bad day or a mental lapse, and I think these reporters' reputations should give them enough leeway to be able to make a mistake. Nevertheless, these slip-ups are very representative of how time constraints and the 'new newspaper norm' can effect even the most prestigious journalists.
In the case of David Halbfinger, the trouble was his reliance on his anonymous source. This practice of using solely unnamed sources in stories is not anywhere near uncommon in today's political news. Nick Confessore, the other reporter mentioned in that first section, uses them all the time. Confessore's competition are the NY politic blogs, who base entire posts off these unknowns. So I can only assume how easy it is to be tempted, when your colleagues and your competition are up to it. But there is no excuse to not follow up with confirmation sources. This is, as Borden says, a total failure of epistemic responsibility--or, ensuring we cover enough bases to be able to state the truth. If "journalism and other intellectual practices specialize in knowing how to know about the world," as Borden says, failure to adequately source a story looks like a failure in this particular intellectual practice.
-see next post-
Journalists need to take care to ensure their profession remains an intellectual practice, or else they really don't have a purpose.
In the case of the previous case and in the faked letter, those were totally representative of over-competition in these newsrooms. Publications get so over-excited when they break a story, they get overwhelmed and rush to the scene of the submission box. After all, as Borden says, "Time is money. Time is winning. Time is owning." BUT, as she also says, "time is also implied in the notion of news itself," so it cannot be used as an excuse to be sloppy.
Whereas meeting deadlines inhibited truth-telling in The Paper, lack of checking sources and verifying information led the news writers in the article to publish false information.Hackett gets it right when he says, "People will read this, Alicia, and they'll believe us."Hackett is aware that the public trusts in the newspaper and he does not want to give them false information.
In The Phone Call and The Faked Letter, the newsreporters failed to verify their information. Even though the newspaper companies have verification policies for reporters to abide by, the reporters failed to initiate the verification and the editors failed to enforce the policies and double-check the facts. Coley is wrong in calling it an "honest mistake" - it isn't that honest because it was false information and it was a mistake that should have never happened in the first place. Feyer is right in saying that "the credibility of The Times is everything." A trust exists between the public and The Times where the public expects The Times to be honest and accurate in their stories and any trust that is broken is hard to gain back. Reporters, like everyone else, are prone to mistakes and the best they can do is try to be as accurate as possible. In these cases, the reporters did not even try to get legitimate evidence to support theirinformation.
In The Wild Party, reporter Evans had too much trust in his source, McFarland, and failed to verify McFarland's information. This becomes a problem when you have established a personal relationship with your source and you have to trust them, while double-checking every single word they say. But if this is what needs to be done to get the truth, then it needs to be done. This reflects on society - you can't always believe everything you hear and sometimes, you may have to seek the truth yourself.
It's said that Sissela Bok said that absolute truth is out of human reach and the best we could do is truthfulness. The thing is what happens if your not in anyway trying to be malicious and think you have the facts correct.
In all three situations where fictional news was produced in the Times it was because of laziness on the part of the journalist and lack of fact checking. I don't think David Halbfinger, Thomas Feyer, and Thayer Evans were trying to pull a fast one on anyone, they just used poor judgment combined with a laziness not to strictly fact check.
I can't believe it took until January 2009 for a paper that's been around for over a century to make psychically calling and verifying letter writers before their submissions are published, a concrete part of their verification policy for letters to the editor. I think it's every journalist duty to make sure they have all the facts straight and not to assume a single thing in doing they're job of being as careful as humanely possible to report the facts.
In her chapter on The Paper, Sandra Borden assesses that "if anyone is called to exercise epistemic responsibility, it is journalists and others who claim excellence in the pursuit of truth." She goes on to say, "Given their role, they are expected to meet 'standards of intellectual achievement over and above those expected of persons simply as persons.'" However, the journalists, skilled and professional as they may be, mentioned in the "Leaps of Faith" article failed to meet those intellectual standards, In my opinions, journalistic competition and the time factor are both partially to blame; like Keith, I don't think that the Times writers had any ill intent when contributing their stories.
David Halbfinger's reliance on an anonymous source can easily be condemned as unwise, but its not at all uncommon in today's news industry, which is so reliant on deadlines, especially with the factor of the internet. While Halbfinger is to blame, he can also be seen as a good journalist who slipped up in a constantly changing, constantly rushed media industry. The factor of competition was undoubtedly a contributing element, as well. With a great deal of his colleagues relying upon anonymous sources for perfectly accurate stories, Halbfinger was simply putting himself on an even playing field.
"The Wild Party" shows the journalist Evans having entirely too much faith in a source, who he probably shouldn't have had much faith in to begin with, considering the circumstances of the situation. Competition could easily have fueled Evans to trust McFarland, though. He presented an interesting story that every journalist would have wanted to run. That's certainly hard to resist. Evans, however, should have practiced a little more discretion and looked at the situation objectively, not with the mindset that he was getting a terrific story that would draw in readers.
Its definitely hard to separate yourself from the story when you're writing it, but that's really what journalists have to do. They need always to refer back to the basic tenets of journalistic professionalism and ethics. Otherwise, they are just as bad as someone who reads the National Enquirer and believes every headline. As Borden explains, "Journalists should force themselves to examine the assumptions that are driving their coverage to make sure that there is at least one reasonable correspondence between the facts that they are able to confirm and the storyline they choose to interpret those facts."
In her chapter on The Paper, Sandra Borden assesses that "if anyone is called to exercise epistemic responsibility, it is journalists and others who claim excellence in the pursuit of truth." She goes on to say, "Given their role, they are expected to meet 'standards of intellectual achievement over and above those expected of persons simply as persons.'" However, the journalists, skilled and professional as they may be, mentioned in the "Leaps of Faith" article failed to meet those intellectual standards, In my opinions, journalistic competition and the time factor are both partially to blame; like Keith, I don't think that the Times writers had any ill intent when contributing their stories.
David Halbfinger's reliance on an anonymous source can easily be condemned as unwise, but its not at all uncommon in today's news industry, which is so reliant on deadlines, especially with the factor of the internet. While Halbfinger is to blame, he can also be seen as a good journalist who slipped up in a constantly changing, constantly rushed media industry. The factor of competition was undoubtedly a contributing element, as well. With a great deal of his colleagues relying upon anonymous sources for perfectly accurate stories, Halbfinger was simply putting himself on an even playing field.
"The Wild Party" shows the journalist Evans having entirely too much faith in a source, who he probably shouldn't have had much faith in to begin with, considering the circumstances of the situation. Competition could easily have fueled Evans to trust McFarland, though. He presented an interesting story that every journalist would have wanted to run. That's certainly hard to resist. Evans, however, should have practiced a little more discretion and looked at the situation objectively, not with the mindset that he was getting a terrific story that would draw in readers.
Its definitely hard to separate yourself from the story when you're writing it, but that's really what journalists have to do. They need always to refer back to the basic tenets of journalistic professionalism and ethics. Otherwise, they are just as bad as someone who reads the National Enquirer and believes every headline. As Borden explains, "Journalists should force themselves to examine the assumptions that are driving their coverage to make sure that there is at least one reasonable correspondence between the facts that they are able to confirm and the storyline they choose to interpret those facts."
I agree with most of the posts here. In The Paper, no more than one official source was used and reproducing sources’ exact words never happened here and with the scenarios with the misleading interview with former Sen. Kennedy’s spokesman and fake email to The Times editor. With the tale of the twelve miners surviving and just going along with the rest of the press wires, it’s unethical to disregard epistemic responsibility and seek further truth when something fishy arises. The Paper knew there was a possibility of police framing teenagers on the scanner but were pressed for a cop quote before a deadline, kind of like the same instance for the various newspapers that ran the untrue story about the 12 miners surviving a mine collapse without checking anything from the people involved in West Virginia. Times reporter David Halbinger said, “I had an out-of-mind experience for two hours, and I can’t believe it happened. It was just awful.” The circumstances Halbfinger described amounted to a breakdown in communication with sources and fellow reporters, and even though he took full responsibility, he was still disregarding epistemic responsibility for himself, his sources and the paper’s reputation. Like the fictional Hackett in The Paper, there were no viable storylines to counter with the theme of Senator Kennedy saying anything in regards to his niece Caroline Kennedy running for office or anything from his spokesman, the fake address of a mayor in the editor’s email or the untruthfulness of a freelancer actually attending/witnessing a party after a Texas-Oklahoma football game in which the reporter didn’t even try to save face or make sense of the matter. As journalists, they should all recognize and utilize epistemic responsibility and narrative fidelity, but with outside pressures and desperation/temptation, lies can easily become truth without realizing the repercussions of their actions.
"Trust but verify," is the key advice for every reporter, but as Atkin mentioned, people slip. People get comfortable, and people get lazy, and when that happens, we don't seek the truth with the same eagerness.
With "The Faked Letter," editor Thomas Feyer, made a careless mistake. He had some doubts which he admitted to, but did it anyway. Why? How long could it possibly have taken to verify it? A phone call?
I think one of the biggest obstacles in journalistic truth-telling is staying motivated. Though the entire backbone of journalism is trust, especially in a team of reporters, but there should be a small dosage of doubt. Just enough to keep competition, which we've talked about in class, keeping people on their toes.
Competition leads to motivation, which leads to a better desire to find the absolute truth and report it.
I am sure that editor Thomas Evans was too comfortable, too lazy to check and make sure the letter was not fake, resulting in a disaster after.
This is not only an obstacle for journalism, but every profession, the only difference, is that with journalism, you mess with the truth and the people.
Truth is constantly being emphasized in our society and I believe that journalists need to adhere to that value because it is their job to alert and inform the general public. As Borden says, journalists are expected to have that epistemic responsibility to seek and share the truth. In the Phone Call, I believe that Halbfinger's mistake was careless, in a sense- we are continually being told that if a source is unnamed, we shouldn't use it. The fact that nothing was verified correctly before making all the statements questions Halbfinger's duty as a journalist. In the case of the faked email, Feyer's mistake was more along the lines of not taking his time to double-check all the warning signs, which, I believe, is not too drastic. But the fact that the Times decided to adhere "strictly to its verification policies for letters to the editor" right after the occurrence kind of puzzles me. The Times is a respected and prestigious publication, you'd think they would have caught on earlier.
Borden says that journalists must meet standards and in the article the majority of the journalists did not meet these standards. Given the ones that posted lies did not do it intentionally but truth is always expected. For those that unknowingly published unchecked information it is acceptable to look over the situation but if it continues there is a problem. In journalism there should be a standard of truth that everyone must adhere to and we cannot just accept everything for fact it is necessary to fact check and correspond with sources. If there is not enough adequate information then the story should not be run. Or course it can be difficult to get responses from everyone but journalists must make sure what they are giving to others is accurate.
I am also in agreement with most of these comments.
F. Siebert is quoted in the chapter The Paper. "Let all with something to say be free to express themselves. The true and sound will survive; the false and the unsound will be vanquished."
We are a privileged nation in having the right to free speech in the First Amendment. Such a right, especially as a journalist, should be used as a positive tool in being truthful and informative to the public. What I've gathered from the examples mentioned in both readings is that certain obstacles (such as deadlines, cutthroat competition and the desperate need for a catchy story) frequently put journalists in an inattentive state, where journalistic basics are completely overlooked.
The cases mentioned in the Times article flawed from epistemic irresponsibility, if you will. There is of course, a basic understanding that the news is always “modern” as events are constantly changing, and consequently, so is the truth. In the meantime however, that is no justification for our journalists to be trusting of all information that arises. Citizens seek the truth from journalists, trusting that they have already weeded out the inaccuracies. What purpose do they serve when that hasn’t already been done?
Sourcing, investigation, truth verification and confirmation are crucial because they are the foundation that journalism is ultimately based upon. With such carelessness and neglect, these publications are doing serious harm in misleading the general public. Enhancement, omission and exaggeration are merely lying- what we know, versus what we believe, is what should be published.
As many of my classmates have made mention to, Borden addresses Sissela Bok's philosophy of truthfulness, which she explains to be an individual's capacity to explain what they fully believe is the truth. Borden goes on to illustrate that journalists should be held accountable for achieving higher standards of truthfulness compared to the average Joe. Borden does however admit that truth is "tricky" because it is subject to change with new information. In the NY Times article, Leaps of Faith and the Trouble That Followed, journalist David Halbfinger used information from a letter written by unnamed sources to publish a story, without consulting any of the people the letter addressed. Halbfinger claimed that he misinterpreted Senator Edward Kennedy's spokesperson's comment of "nothing for you on that story" to mean "no comment." Either way, I believe Halbfinger was reckless in his journalistic practice because he in no way found any information that made the anonymous source's story remotely valid. He relied solely on a baseless letter and neglected his responsibilities to achieve superb journalistic integrity. When one is in a position like Halbfinger's, who has the ability to reach a large audience and who writes for a respected publication like the Times, more precautions must be taken.
I kind of think it's funny how this article basically states that none of these reporters & editors did their jobs, and yet it doesn't look like there's going to be any penalty besides an explanation article. Isn't verifying what youre going to publish in THE NEW YORK TIMES basically journalism 101? How could Thomas Feyer even think that 'the fact that the real mayor’s name was in the originating address helped persuade him that the message was genuine' was enough to believe that it was real? I get emails from people in other countries all the time telling me that my great aunt died and they have $120 million for me if i just give them my basic info & my social security number. Does Thomas Feyer buy into this bullshit too?
While yes I believe that it can be difficult sometimes to verify parts of a story, or uncover whether or not your supposed facts are actually real, but it doesn't look like any of these reporters, with the exception of MAYBE Thayer Evans (if the kid actually lied to him) even went through any real steps to verify a story. Just because someone doesn't get back to you and say something is false, that doesn't automatically make it truth.
In Borden's chapter on The Paper, she mentions the Greek philosophical concept that "the object of our quest is human excellence." With the goal of seeking truth on so many minds, it should be surprising when a journalist breaches that dedication just in order to have a story to publish.
Bok's concept of truthfulness states that "we do our best to convey what we believe to be the truth" and that contradicts what occurred in the Times article. The duty of a journalist is to seek and report the truth, and that requires a lot more careful work than it seems the journalists in the article actually put into their stories. Without actually checking to be sure the information they're feeding to the public is true, they are not doing their job the way they should. Although they were mistakes, they could have been avoided by following the codes they are supposed to abide by. While I agree that it may not have been malicious and their intentions were never to wrongly inform the public, the journalists are still at fault for not using the proper sources.
It is important that these habits do not continue. If they do, the quality of journalism even in the most respected of publications could worsen and then who could the public turn to for the truth?
As money makes the world go around, Journalist face extreme troubles trying to uphold a certain level of truth within their news articles as pressures to release news that lead to high levels of profit could lead to false information being released to the public. As stated in the chapter “Journalist seek the truth to enlighten and empower citizens” and included in this responsibility is they do their best to ensure that the information they report to the public is accurate and conveys what they believe to be is the truth that can be verified by a credible official source. Both the article in the NY Times and “The Paper” present cases where a lack of credible sources diminished the truthfulness of a news article and could have simply been avoided if the author verified their sources. These mistakes were able to occur because of external pressures and a pure ignorance in context that the author didn’t even think to check the validity of an email. Deadlines and competition can lead to journalist publishing an article lacking credible sources or the amount of correct information needed for the entire story to be published. The article states “deadlines don’t justify filling the news hole with stories that journalist know are misleading or incorrect”, therefore good journalist can protect the integrity of their work by acknowledging the information they are missing informing the reader of this omission.
The reason this problem continues to occur is because of the way we look at how we fill the space in news. If we are calling the empty space in the newspaper “news holes” it is implied that we can fill this hole with anything rather than with information that is truthful and credible. To fix this problem that continues to plague journalist and journalism as a whole, we must develop universal standards to follow when we present the public with information because misleading the public is against the fundamentals of journalism. “We are in the business of reporting truth, and we can’t just ignore it”.
“The Paper” and the New York Times article both include examples of different types of journalists. There is the journalist who “will take reasonable care to ensure that they are using appropriate procedures to finding out the truth.” Then there is journalist like Steven Glass who deliberately lies in order to get ahead. I think the editors from the New York Times article made honest mistakes but at the same time they printed something that was not completely fact checked. AS wonderful as it would be to trust all journalists, I think its important to verify information even if an editor has been part of a paper for a whole lifetime.
Providing accurate information for the public everyday while making sure that they are respectable stories can be tough for journalists. I think that one of the major obstacles that journalists face is accepting that every interesting story has the chance of not being published. I think that many editors will overlook some information of a well-written story because they want to publish an attractive story. But, journalism is not all about interesting stories- journalism is about truthfulness and going to all lengths to finding that truth.
I agree with a number of the previous posts. I don't think the actions of the editors mentioned were malicious. I feel that they were only human and made an error, but it was a big error and an unprofessional error at that. The quote by Sandra L. Borden ends with "If historians hope to recapture the past for present times, journalists hope to capture the present so that it may one day become a record of the past;it is in this sense that journalists write the first draft of history."
This quote almost defends the mistake made by the editor in the article. I believe that the major obstacle journalists face is being human and being capable of making mistakes and trusting a source too quickly.
Both the chapter "The Paper" and the NYTimes article "Leaps of Faith" exemplify the standards of journalists and those they should abide by. However, like shown in the NYTimes article, these standards are not always accurately met. In a world where lying is (can I say acceptable?) by political figures and others, it should be the most important job of the journalist to stick to a standard of accuracy and truth in order to gain the trust and respect of the paper's readers. Otherwise, how is the staff of a paper reporting on a political figure that lies any better than that figure? When those lines are crossed, it strays away from the trusting society we should we want to live in and be a part of.
We cannot rely on trust alone but facts, especially while reporting. Those that are being written about want to look good, always, and if that means not sticking to the truth, or bending it a little, that will happen. Facts are what are important. Leave the bending of the truth for the entertainment tabloids.
It seems to be the consensus that the situation in "The Paper," and the real-life correalations with both The New York Times incident as well as with the situation of the 12 alleged survivors of the tragic mining accident in West Virginia are troubling yet ever-present examples of greed and the bottom line overcoming the pursuit of the truth in today's world of the twenty-four seven news cycle. While it seems to me that the situation presented to viewers in The Paper is more dramatic and grossly neglegent on the part of the fictional characters (with the real-life counter-parts seem to be more careless and seemingly innocent), none of the situations are any less egregious than the rest.
The only one of the real-life situations that could have been easily avoided is seemingly the mistake by the "Letters to the Editor" editor. My honest first reaction was that my grandfather does the same thing when he reads his e-mail, see's that he won a prize, opens it, and 3 hours later is calling me asking why his screen is blue and shit is smoking. I could be dead wrong with the guy's age but I'm assuming my assumption is right and maybe The Times should consider replacing him, or sending him to a few classes at the senior center. While the movie illustrates moves that were made seemingly strictly because of a business decision, the others are more careless and lazy mistakes by otherwise dilligent reporters. Staying focused seems to be a huge challenge, and the advice Ronald Reagan gives is spot on, "Trust, by verify."
**"Trust, but verify."
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