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?"
By chasing a chimera of of objectivity they can't meet -- and one the public would happily tell them matters more inside the newsroom than outside of it -- traditional newspapers have gotten further and further away from writing in a manner that readers can relate to.
This matters a lot because it's at the root of the "gotcha" journalism most local broadcasts engage in, it's one of the big factors behind the decline in newspaper readership and (most importantly), it's pissing away the trust that the U.S. model of press freedom spent 200-odd years building up.
The funny thing: Newspapers know this, but they're trapped by the by the same bundling mentality that's choking innovation in the telco market.
Disclaimer: I was a journalist for a bunch o' years and made these same observations then, too. Not a good way to make friends with the publisher's office.
The point: Most readers will trade off accuracy for someone who's openly in their philosophical or political corner. Another segment will trade off accuracy for immediacy. If you're both passionate and immediate, of course you're going to be a formidable thread to old-school media.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
This woman sounds like a capital... (insert word that I don't want to say). People should always try to be as accurate as they can be, and the fact that she doesn't care astounds me. It's ridiculous because anyone, for example in politics, should strive to spread the truth and not lies. Truth that is damning is fine, but lies are terrible, and getting the scoop on a true story is a small reward when the majority of the information coming from your loud mouth is false.
I always hit Drudge first thing when I log on in the morning. I don't necessarily trust everything he says or posts, but if something big happened, I know it will be there. Then I can check more reputable sites to see if there is any truth to it. So for me, sites like Drudge have a lot of value, even if they aren't always accurate.
American journalism is controlled by accountants. By advertisers. By sensitivity to advertisers. By political correctness. By harried people competing against a rapidly evolving medium they don't fully grasp. By sheet mediocrity.
But American media is not controlled by our political figures.
Yes, we give them too much air time/column space with too little substance. And yes, the press should be more of a watch dog and less of a lap dog. But can a media market that gives us both Rush Limbaugh and The Nation really be under the control of political figures?
Or maybe you mean Rush is controlled by the GOP and The Nation is run by progressives and far-left Democrats? OK, fair enough -- I don't think it's true, but let's say it is. That's still one helluva long way from the media being controlled by all the politics.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
When you buy a newspaper, you generally make an actual investment in that news source (a quarter, a dollar, whatever). You expect it to be more accurate because it costs money, because there are fewer, and they have less space.
On the web, it's different. If one news source is regularly not accurate, it's VERY easy to switch to something else. Your choices are almost unlimited, and you have the ability to easily see multiple sources. Is Drudge 100%? No, but he does often bring you the important news stories first, and I'm okay with that tradeoff as long as his accuracy rate isn't completely horrible.
I find it humorous in the extreme that the New York Times is whining about other people putting forth an agenda, a big story, or humor before accuracy.
Regardless of their political beliefs, I would hope that any reader of the New York Times, the LA Times, or the overwhelming majority of big-time newspapers have a certain... political agenda... behind them.
The New York Times, for instance, has a tendancy to write with a pronounced liberal slant in any article that relates directly to politics.
In many other articles, any careful reader can spot a certain angle... a certain group or person that we are meant to side with.
Go grab a copy of the paper, and read looking for bias. you'll find it.
As always, it depends on how your site visitors react to the knowledge of what you do. When you want the latest scoop, you go to the 'scoop sites'. When you want detailed, substantiated information, you go to authoritative sources! For example, I have struggled a bit with this issue on my weblog and I eventually decided to go for what I enjoy writing, cold as it may be for some people. the kind of visitors I need will come. Be yourself
The two most interesting things about that godawful site are:
1) There's now a large enough of an incestuous core of "new media" types that well-connected individuals can instantly jump to prominence over far superior alternatives who don't know the old gang from Wired. Just like there's no getting rid of Andy Rooney, there will be no getting rid of the folks from Suck or Salon.
2) The nerdy guys who dominate the online world are absolute suckers for any woman who will talk about sex.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think this is interesting.
Accuracy is important for a good reputation, and in this world of overwhelming choice, it is a valuable commodity.
Nobody is going to want an always wrong news source.
However people have short memories, and don't really check facts.
I think the traditional news media has little competition, there are a few big papers available everywhere, and they have their particular market. Very hard for a new player to get in there.
Online there is a lot more competition, and they have access to the same distribution channels. If a superior competitor comes up, they can win.
Google is currently ruling the online search because they do it right. News sites will be the same.
Responsiblity, the 'media' has a responsiblity, but sometimes they shirk it, and hopefully the public will accept this less.
When it is possible for even a popular news source to be ditched this may change.
Or we might get news media that just spouts popular opinion to stay "in power", then everyone will be scared to speak the truth.
Hell no.
I disagree fundamentally with just about everything mentioned there. A website, if it is even pretending to be a "news site", absolutely must be accurate. You cannot simply roll dice to determine a story if you want to keep a consistent reader base. Being first means nothing if you are totally wrong.
As for humor trumping accuracy, this too is patently absurd. It's funny to laugh at George Bush mangling a quote in a headline, but what if (and believe me, it's a stretch for me to defend W. here) the President never said it?
Let's jump forward about five years. The President of the United States has just given a press conference. Some yutz with a long-range microphone and a web-enabled palm pilot sits about 500 yards away from the White House Lawn, watching the President get off the podium. Under his breath, Mr. President mutters, "God, I just bombed that Cuba issue."
The guy with the long mike hears "God, I just bombed [indistinct] Cuba [indistinct]." Twenty-four hours later, Miami is in ruins and nobody knows why, until they check out a web site that claims that the U.S. has nuked Havana.
Information mutates so rapidly on the Web, with everyone adding their own bias to the "facts" they receive. It's like the old 'telephone' game everybody used to play in kindergarten-- pass the message along and see how it changes four or five kids down the line.
Accuracy is important in any medium. With the web, however, it's evolved to a point where nobody can really believe anything unless a) the source is reputable or b) it comes from multiple sources. Publishing false or inaccurate information undermines a), and with b) there can be nobody who "breaks the news first".
I don't really consider the web to be a primary source of "real world" news-- sure, I read four or five gaming sites every day to keep up on the industry, but that's different from something like, say, global thermonuclear war. For something like that I will always turn to traditional media such as radio, print, or television. (I consider the web sites of the traditional news media to be a pseudo-extension of those publications; they still require verification from "outside" but are generally more trusted than the average web site.)
Bottom line: A blog is not and can never be an implicitly "trusted" news source. Not even my own. Especially not my own.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
whereas Slashdot tries to pass it's rumormongering and hearsay off as real reporting
Slashdot is schizophrenic with regard to their opinion and support for "real reporting." Some editors bend over backward to say full-disclosure things like "OSDN is the parent of Slashdot and " while others publically and vehemently refuse to improve the site for accuracy and basic professionalism.
Duplicate stories, poor grammar, weak disclosure, no appearance of impartiality, no proactive rebuttal, and other factors just show that the parent company likes the ad revenue but doesn't care about the rest. The editors are not editors at all, it's a kid's club blog which happens to have a huge readership.
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This, of course, assumes that there were any standards in pace at the beginning, something I am not so sure about.
In some European countries newspaper subscritopns are down and still falling. I believe people are getting fed up by cheap entertainment.
Wonkette has provided ammunition to her current and future enemies. In order for a public figure or a public official to win a suit for libel, the plaintiff must prove either that the alleged statement was published "with knowledge that the [information] was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." Wonkette has just provided all future plaintiffs with evidence that she publishes statements with reckless disregard of whether they are true or false.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
I wouldn't say Drudge, Wonkette or others are getting a free pass.
... and don't mind it coming from a singular, unedited point of view, so long as it is entertaining and has some semblance of intellectual honesty.
At least once a week, some form of the "old media" takes it to the blogosphere.
The fact is, there are people who want a quick, short, snarky read
--- have you healed your church website?
I'll give you that, there is too much to report, but you have to consider why they report what they report. They want to express one view and that's it. When have you ever heard Dan Rather or Tom Brokaw saw anything good about Republicans?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
It's funny, but I don't think the medium (necessarily) dictates how trustworthy a site is, but rather the site's standards reflect its trustworthiness.
As you mentioned, the New York Times wasn't very careful about catching that guy who just made up his stories. Forbes is another publication that has failed to exercise reasonable editorial control over their writers (*cough*Daniel Lyons*cough*) who was allowed to publish some lame attempt at character assassination. Ironically, it was directed at PJ of Groklaw fame who had chided him for just parroting press releases from SCO instead of doing research. Surprise, surprise, his article was also weak and poorly researched. He cited trolls as a source, for crying out loud (worse, by trolls I mean the obscene & idiotic ones, not merely those who try to make opposing views into flamebait). Frankly, I feel that Forbes does some of the shoddiest research ever. You could skip them entierly and just read the PR Newswire directly.
But I grant you, Slashdot itself is pretty much just a rumor mill most of the time, yet we (hopefully) all know by now to take the stories here with a grain of salt, as the articles are generally a bit sensational.
There are only a handful of sources online that I trust all that much, frankly. I like Google news for giving me a broad overview of the news (since I can get stories from many sources, I can usually filter out much of the bias). The Christian Science Monitor may have been started by Mary Baker Eddie's odd little sect, but it's a rather good newspaper because it was founded to have high journalistic ethics, since the church who founded it disliked the sensational pieces about their sect.
Last but not least, I appreaciate Groklaw. Not only has PJ sit on some stories until she could get a second source for confirmation (as good journalists are supposed to do...), but she links to all the PDFs and other documents so that no one, not even SCO, has to take her word for it.
Wikipedia's NPOV policy, "neutral point of view," is a great way to handle this. If the story comes in, and you aren't sure it's factual but want to get it out real quick, report WHO said WHAT. That way you are only reporting sure facts. "A nameless caller claims that JFK Jr.'s plane has been recovered by the Coast Guard" is a fact if said caller is on the line with you, even if you aren't sure that his statement, "JFK Jr.'s plane has been recovered by the Coast Guard" is factual or not.
This has the benefit that it encourages people to think critically and allows them to make their own appraisal of the trustworthiness of the information and its source.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I used to poke by Yahoo news or CNN each day. I started to dislike the way CNN covered some things. Not liberal or conservative, but rather omissions of information reflecting both sides of the spectrum. Basically, poor writing.
So, I switched to Google News. Suddenly, what was "hot" was decided by the number of online sources writing about it. I started reading online periodicals I never hit before, like channelasia.com and reuters. Story accuracy and viewpoint was nicely indexed and facts could be cross-checked.
Now, I only use Google news. It creates the counterbalancing effect to sites that specialize in scoops and poor fact checking. If a story breaks, you immediately can read through 15 different viewpoints on it.
This is the power of the net, the pluralism of news sources. No single entity without indexing technology can achieve what Google has. With one swoop of the web spider, Google has acted as a counterbalance to large corporate media empires sucking up the number of radio and tv outlets. Fight so that it doesn't get regulated away.
Wonkette is clearly entertainment, not news. What's the problem? The real questions here should be:
(1) Is anybody gullible enough to take that site at face value?
(2) Can Cox be held responsible for the American public's failure to understand when someone is taking the piss?
All of the blogs I read begin with links. They report their little blurb about each story, with a link to whatever source they got it from. If you find it the least bit suspicious, (I usually do, since I'm a bit of a skeptic) just follow the link to the source.
Now, admittedly the source is usually another blog, and that one sometimes links to another blog, but eventually somewhere down the line they link to big-mainstream-media. Failing that, there's Google. The purpose of the blogs should be to quickly summarize lots of information, not to provide trusted data. If anything catches your eye, find the data yourself.
Everyone go out right now and read Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Not only is it hilarious, but you will see that none of these issues is new.
personally, if I find a news item of interest on say Slashdot, I investigate further and check for information from reparable news sites. However, most people are too dumb/lazy to even read any article mentioned in a given post and then go on to rant about something completely unrelated. Ah well, the world is full of idiots anyway, why no at least keep them ill-informed too.
Not really. In Genesis God creates the earth and the plants before he creates the sun. That's not even close.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
This is where it pays to start off with a Karma bonus.
Basically, if you have a contrary post that is not well thought out, or calls everyone stupid, then there is no possibility that your post will survive being down-modded into oblivion.
That's the nature of the business, and it's not necessarily "slashthink", instead it's the general phenomenon of conversation. If six people are sitting around talking about the postive value of ice, and you come by - in effect - interrupting the conversation, telling everyone about how horrible freezing to death is. It's on topic, but it's rude... This is the time in group-think where we say, start you own thread, and we'll get to you.
Yes, I've seen top-thread starters get modded down due to group think, but never a post that's more than a few lines of on-topic, non-inflamatory material.
There are ways to tell people that they are wong without saying, "Hey, Nimrod, your being dumb!".
Well, I do appreciate, say, a really well-written news analysis in the New York Times (which aims for neutrality and comprehensiveness)
I'll bet they even believe that. The problem is that the 'journalist' community is rather small, and they all read each other's stuff, so there tends to be a consensus of opinion.(Although with Fox you at least get a second nexus of opinion.) I get much more out of reading the blogosphere. Where else can you find anti-war conservatives and pro-war frenchmen?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Point. But I'm describing libertarians as what I think has historically been the strongest political leaning in the Slashdot readership (and historically on the internet in general). There are clearly people of other political leanings here in some number, that some of them post, and that some of them even post thoughtfully and get moderated up wasn't something I intended to dispute. And, for the record, I wasn't intending to imply libertarians are wingnuts. I'm not a capital-L Libertarian, but I have a fairly strong overlap with them, particularly when it comes to civil liberties issues. (Some libertarians are certainly wingnuts, but that's endemic to every political persuasion.)
To respond to a couple comments below yours: It's possible to make the case that Slashdot has appeared to turn to the left over the last few years, but it's also possible to make the case that some of the ideas that were "fringe left" a few years have made their way into more of the political mainstream. It's not just people whose idea of a fun weekend is chaining themselves to redwoods who are protesting against Wal-Mart these days, and it's not just the campus socialists who are wondering if the close relationship between big business and big government is a bad thing. Five years ago, only people who listened to Pacifica Radio talked about "corporate welfare"; now you can hear it used, at least occasionally, by libertarian thinktanks, with much the same intent that the lefties have had.
As for whether or not I'm partisan because I'm clearly not a big supporter of Bush, which was clearly the implication of one slightly snide comment: yes, I suppose so, but I wouldn't be a big supporter of Bush were I substantially more conservative than I am. I also wasn't a particularly big supporter of President Clinton, whose administration hardly championed the rights of individual liberty and privacy.