Slashdot Mirror
Wonkette and the Ethics of Online Journalism
Decaffeinated Jedi writes "The New York Times offers up a thought-provoking article ('First With the Scoop, if Not the Truth' - free reg. req.) on Ana Marie Cox, proprietor of the popular inside-the-beltway gossip blog Wonkette. Known for her site's 'gossipy, raunchy, potty-mouthed' coverage of Washington politics, site owner Nick Denton is quoted in the article as saying, 'I think it's implicit in the way that a Web site is produced that our standards of accuracy are lower. Besides, immediacy is more important than accuracy, and humor is more important than accuracy.' Needless to say, such a statement raises some interesting questions about the growing influence of blogs and other non-traditional online news sources. That being said, does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
That being said, does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
This really is a nonsensical spin on this story, and also the wrong question to be asking. Wonkette, Drudge, and even Slashdot can put whatever the heck they want to online. It is up to the reader to decide, based on multiple criteria, whether or not they believe/trust/put stock in the information's deliverer.
If you as reader use no criteria as filters, if you blindly believe any site, info, data, gossip, or especially scoop, you deserve what you get. That goes for both the online world and the offline.
That said, it's amusing how little humans change despite this new technology we're all enjoying. Gossip columnists and gossips in general have always been with us, have always been attractive to us, and no doubt will always be, even when we're beaming our thoughts at each other telepathically in our lifepods in orbit around the Sedna refuelling station.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
How is it a 'scoop' if the news/story/whatever is innacurate? I could scoop ALL the major news sources just by making up crap stories featuring the right players. I don't see any way to call this (or relate this) to journalism.
When I was studying journalism in college, the answer was, "Speed is more important, provided you are accurate." In other words, you have to get the scoop and get it right.
Well, that was the answer that was spoken out loud. The truth is really that speed is far more important that accuracy, no matter what medium you're talking about. We have an insatiable appetite for news and information, and we would prefer to know that SOMETHING, ANYTHING, is going on right now, and you can fill us in on details as they become available.
Now, there is the nagging suspicion that if one is continuously inaccurate, one's viewership/readership will suffer. Bloggers have to overcome this obstacle as much as more traditional media.
Of course, if you're always the last one to break the story, it doesn't matter how accurate you are...nobody will be reading you to find out.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
You MUST be new here.
Now that that joke's out of the way, I don't think online sites get any more of a free ride when it comes to accuracy. For example, look at the following incidents in the traditional "old media":
When it comes down to it, the Web is just as (un)reliable a source for information as anything else.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
The point: Most readers will trade off accuracy for someone who's openly in their philosophical or political corner.
Most readers will naturally flock to a source that reflects their philisophical/political views sure, but do they actually realize they are trading accuracy? I certainly can't understand why anyone would willingly get their information from an inaccruate source, and then use that information to either form opinions or attempt to advance their views. It kind of hurts someone's arguement when they base it on inaccurate information.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Got me to thinking how the NY Times will print just about anything these days. A news site operating under the creed, "immediacy is more important than accuracy, and humor is more important than accuracy" has a free pass on accuracy because obviously, IT'S NOT A NEWS SITE!
Sure, we can look at how such sites are used and how they affect readers' opinions on certain issues, but not every mention of current affairs is 'news'. What's next? An expose on The Daily Show? Op-Ed pieces on how MAD fold-ins distort the issues?
If the Times is really concerned about standards of accuracy, I'm sure there is plenty of work to do in house.
I think it's interesting your take on that statement, but I see something different at work.
Slashdot does not produce or report news. So, just as the editorial section of a newspaper, by default, gets to say whatever the editor wants to say, regardless of fact or spin - the same is true for a blog.
If newsforge (slashdot's sister site) tries to run opinions and not facts - then we'd have a question to be had.
Is a newspaper the place to run opinion fodder? Well, that's up for debate. So far the only legal remedy to printed lies is to file a libel suit. And the criteria for libel is the same regardless of the medium (unless you are doing a parody).
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Journalism is a craft which mixes observation, investigation, analysis, scientific description, creative description, and a careful balancing of conflicting information and viewpoints. It leads to a certain kind of information -- journalistic information -- which has a very important place in the world.
... and so on.
There are other kinds of information: gossip, rumors, speculation, argumentation, analysis from a particular viewpoint, the presentation of interesting information which favors timeliness over verifiability, research, balance, and even accuracy. Like Slashdot, for example. This kind of information also has a place in the world, and it's also a very important place. And the list goes on: there is scientific research, which is not the same as philosophy, which is not the same as intuitive speculation
I wouldn't want to live in a world without this variety of types of information.
The problem comes when people confuse these many different kinds of information. Slashdot, for example, is not journalism. It is great and fun and sometimes idiotic but often useful -- it's just simply not journalism.
So, as daeley rightly points out: let the reader beware! Judge your information and the sources of that information. Be a wise reader. And to that I'd add: let the writer beware as well. Know what kind of information you are presenting, and present it well.
But part of the point is that accuracy in reporting is far more subtle than true or false. Of course saying you have little regard for trying to establish truth in what you write is appauling, but then don't most high-brow publications claim they print the truth, even when they differ so much.
Ask yourself this: how can (to take UK examples I know about) The Telegraph and The Guardian differ so much, if both are telling the truth? By choosing focus, angle and interpretation, you can dramatically change what the reader comes away with. Just look at the distortions in reporting between US and UK newspapers when the US is involved militarily somewhere and the UK isn't to get an idea of how different they can be (there you have two countries that are at least relatively close in foreign policy and ideology).
So part of the problem with the web is that these problems can become magnified. When reading an established newspaper, you should know the angle, editorial policies etc. and adjust your brain accordingly. But when reading an article on the web, it can require a lot more thought and research to ascertain what angle, scope and interpretation the author is employing. Given that few people even manage this with the established corporate media, imagine the scope for misleading people on the web!
That's not to say that the web is worse (in fact, it's better exactly because you get more variety than you get with the corporate media), but that it's far more intellectually challenging.
I certainly can't understand why anyone would willingly get their information from an inaccruate source, and then use that information to either form opinions or attempt to advance their views.
You are assuming that the arguer values accurate information. In the fundamentalist vs. evolution debate the fundamentalists value their world view over accuracy.
SteveM
And TV? Jesus. When Fox News can be as popular as it is, you know there is something wrong with TV journalism. Fair and Balanced? God I hate them...
When you watch The Today Show you don't notice how openly liberal the hosts are and how they spin every story and every interview to fit their own personal political agendas, because you are a liberal. You might say they were "not completely biased". When I watch Fox and Friends I don't notice how openly conservative the hosts are, etc, because I am a conservative. Neither of us are getting any stories reported in a completely unbiased way, and it's not easy to get a completely unbiased news report from *any* outlet. However, I would call the fact that we have a choice of news outlets with differing political agendas somewhat "Fair and Balanced". Instead of proclaiming your hate to God, you should try to recognize this as a good thing.
I grew up in Egypt, where the most reputable media is government owned and mostly toes the government line, and the opposition media is disposed to exaggerations, personal attacks, and plain inaccuracies. Ironically, this results in a news consumer who understands that he is "reading through a prism" of biases and always attempts to reconstruct 'the truth' (whatever that is) from fragmented and biased accounts. Nobody really accepts anything the media reports at face value.
Unfortunately, I'd say the majority of US news consumers are blissfully unaware of the fact that whatever they're reading or watching is not 'the truth', but some person's account of the truth, no matter how dedicated that person/reporter is to objectivity. My Firefox multi-tab "home page" includes both the NYT and the Wash. Post, and it's incredibly enlightning to see how the two papers *differ* in their headlines covering the same important stories. I don't say this to accuse either paper of bias, but to point out that bias is inevitable.
The US news consumer does have a real advantage: he has *access* to a wide variety of uncensored news sources and opinions in English, and it *is* possible to reconstruct a reasonable version of what's going on by polling a few different sources. I wonder how many people actually avail themseleves of this incredible opportunity.
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
I am so tired of hearing about this. Is the New York Times a liberal paper? Yes, so what?. Does the reporting and editorial content in the Times reflect its liberalism? No. It is the conservatives that you need to worry about, because they let their bias show in their work.
Example, at the begining of Clinton's and W. Bush's first terms, each administration set up a committee to look for solutions to issues that were percieved by each administration to be of utmost importance. Both committees met in secret, and very little information was given to the public about how decisions were made by the committee. The New York Times published several editorials condemning each adminstration. The Wall Street Journal (a conservative paper) published several editorials critical of the Clinton administration, and only one editorial that was critical of the Bush administration.
Just think about the subtle way media displays bias, I was watching Good Morning America a few weeks ago, and they had footage of a cop who was on a routine traffic stop, and was nearly hit by a drunk driver(he was standing in the doorway of his cruiser and the door got knocked off) So, how is that bias? Well, the police department released that tape, (which shows the danger of police work) to the media, and made the officer available for interviews. Does a police department do the same thing when an officer is caught doing something bad on tape? The media let the police control these stories and the effect is (rightly or wrongly) the news has a pro-police bent. Another example of bias would be during the first gulf war all of the footage from the cameras on smart bombs.
Lastly,
When I was a kid(15), watching He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ( the original), a commercial came on that warned of the liberal media bias in our country. Why on earth would conservatives choose to run that spot during a cartoon geared towards kids?
My other sig is extremely clever...
I've also heard this canard about the "left-wing media" for twenty years. Apart from NPR and PBS, what left-wing media has the US had? Would the corporate networks support anything other than the economic status quo? Of course not. (I admit that there are minor exceptions such as Michael Moore's shows, but those were (for lack of a better word) exceptional and their content was restricted by the network.)
I agree that slashdot's community is biased, but I think it misses the point that -everything- is biased. Including traditional media.
By looking at your current mod level, the bias can't be too far off since everyone agrees that your statement deserves mod points.
I disagree with the self political-alignment disclosure however. Anonymous or not, I think the majority of the commentors here would not want to to assign a simple rating to something as complex (and issue-dependant) as a political stance.
The predominant politics on Slashdot are clearly, at least to anyone who's actually paying attention, libertarian. Socially very liberal in the "government shouldn't interfere with us in any way" manner, and economically very conservative in the "government shouldn't interfere with us in any way" manner.
If you think this is a bunch of UC Berkeley students doing moderation, I'd like you to find just about any article on Slashdot about global warming -- or nearly anything which has the temerity to suggest that government regulation may be better at protecting the environment than an unencumbered, for-profit market is -- and compare it with anything from a northern California environmental group. See all those similarities? Of course you don't! THEY'RE NOT THERE!
Take off your partisan blinders here. I've been on Slashdot for a long time and I don't recall people fanboying over President Clinton here particularly out of proportion with his popularity rating with the rest of the country. Statements that are critical of the Bush administration may just be getting modded up here a lot because Bush really isn't as popular across the American populace right now as Clinton, on average, was through his term, and -- again keeping in mind that libertarianism tends to be a dominant philosophy here -- Bush is hardly any more of a poster child for the Cato Institute than Clinton was. Bush's economic record is mediocre at best -- non-military discretionary spending has substantially increased under him compared to the supposedly spendthrift Democrats and, as if to repudiate Clinton's famous "the era of big government is over" line, Bush has presided over the largest expansion in the federal government in four decades. Worse, from a civil liberties standpoint, many people who aren't remotely "liberal" in the way Rush Limbaugh throws about the term feel the Bush administration has been the biggest disaster in several generations.
Inaccuracy from a single online news source is OK, when you cross-reference it with other sources. The Web offers a cheap, workable way to do this that print/broadcast media don't: aggregation. Especially with so much news (in print/broadcast as well as bits/interactive) produced by parallel distribution workflows, headlines, stories, angles and agendas all take a resonance that's unnerving across multiple newsracks, but manageable in an RSS aggregator. See not only the contrasts in reporting/story, but the uncomfortably synthetic similarities of "manufactured news" that agrees too much, especially across "independent" sources.
Wall Street has used these techniques (and techs) for years. Multiple data sources are compared/contrasted for "data quality assurance". Long after the "single point of failure" is left behind, more textured info, weighted perspectives, prediction/accuracy performance grades and simply emergent patterns in the grapevine all add to the usability of the data, with enveloping context environements abounding. Of course, if you still just believe everything you read, at least you'll be too confused by the diversity to do anything that gets in the way of the rest of us clever enough to put the picture together.
--
make install -not war