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..."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Because they've never had a problem with journalistic ethics.
Speaking only of Slashdot, I'll just say... so far.
Although in the case of Slashdot, I think it's not so much about getting a scoop as posting a dupe
I kid, I kid! In truth I love you all!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The thing with an Online medium, is that anyone can publish, and for relatively low cost. There is simply no way to make sure that every small-time publisher has all their facts straight. Hell, look at the Times itself. How long did it take them to catch Jason Blair, and he was just making it up as he went along.
This is where you're going to run into some good old fashioned biological competition. The sites that print the truth all the time, will be better trusted than those that just spew out garbage.
And, then as now, the humor/pundit sites that tell everyone what they should be thinking with no regard to honesty, truth, or provability, will be the best read.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'm not even sure where to start.
An people wonder why news no longer reports news. Reporting as a profession has been going down hill rapidly the last 5 years. It's gotten to the point where news is 95% lies. Every now and then, a reporter works their ass off and gets 35% right. Since reporters rarely have full control and the editor usually change things. Of course people should think critically. Though every now and then it's great fun to post flamebait and trolls.
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..."
Let's see, fired from her previous employer, spreading completely unsubstantiated rumor as fact, and talking nonsense in general...
sounds like she's looking for a job at the Enquirer, Times or Star.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
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?
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.
The difference between Slashdot and Wonkette is that Wonkette unabashedly embraces the fact that Wonkette.com is a rumor mill and kaffeeklatsch, whereas Slashdot tries to pass it's rumormongering and hearsay off as real reporting.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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
Cox 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.'
... ah screw it.
That quote was credited to Nick Denton, the publisher of Wonkette who recruited Ms. Cox to write for the site. Ms. Cox did not say that.
Really now, if you're going to accuse somebody of having low standards for accuracy
"immediacy is more important than accuracy"
That sums up about half of what is wrong with our news today. The other have is:
"entertainment is more important than information"
Gah. That's a scary, scary attitude. Thank goodness pbs/npr, bbc and newspapers still exist.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
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...
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.
the New York Times care about accuracy?
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...
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.
Lets don our tinfoil hats now...
Anyone that believes sites like the drudge, slashdot et al at face value is no better than...
Anyone that believes CNN, Fox "News" and any other reliable "news" source at face value.
It's up to the individual to sift through the information and form their OWN OPINION.
There have been several high profile cases recently (NY Times springs to mind) where reporters have been pulling facts out of their arses with no verification of their facts or anything. Then there are the multitudes of stories that get pulled from the main stream because of political pressure, shareholder interests etc.
Every news article is published by someone who has an agenda. It's just the size of the agenda that differs.
I for one welcome any other opinions or news stories from people that were either there or know people that were. It gives me more choice and a broader exposure to the actual story which allows me to make a much more informed decision as to what I do or do not believe.
Journalism is journalism and an opinion is an opinion, no matter the source. As an aside, has anyone heard of a search engine just for news articles that is as up to date as the news is? The real problem with independant reporting is that it's too hard to actually find the well written pieces to begin with.
John the Kiwi
brilliant:
... 'I think it's implicit in the way that a Web site is produced that our standards of accuracy are lower, he said. "Besides, immediacy is more important than accuracy, and humor is more important than accuracy."'
you say ''Cox 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.'''
No she ISN'T
From the article
'The rules of the blogosphere demand displaying corrections quickly and prominently, said Mr. Denton [the publisher of wonkette]
http://milkshake.dexy.org
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.
The watch phrase for the consumer of anything purporting to be journalism, online or offline, is "let the buyer beware". One person's accurate reporting is another's biased bird cage liner. You neglect to use your critical filter at your own peril.
Slashdot's inaccurate summary about accuracy on the web.
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 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
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...
In the era of Rolling News, Being the first with the scoop is important. In the UK we have 2 major 24/7 channels, News24 (BBC), and Sky News (Murdoch). Sky is usually first with the breaking news, and it drives the News24 editors mad. However their braking news involved stuff like this
1:07: "BREAKING NEWS: Bin Laden Captured"
1:09: "BREAKING NEWS: Bin Laden *not* Captured"
News24 generally waits for a higher standard of conformation before going onair with breaking news, but it's not infalliable.
The BBC also have another rolling news channel, BBC World, which is broadcast everywhere but the UK. Due to its audience it is essential it's accurate. It isn't always accurate, but it's the most accurate, and slowest, rolling news stations I know. It waits for 2 independent sources before breaking a story.
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.
That's exactly why I usually disagree with many /. moderators. The recent poll on income level really shows too. It would certainly seem that most /. readers/modders are unemployed or are college students.
/. to exist and to display opinion, but I think it would serve everyone well if demographics were clearly stated (anonymously).
/.
/. would know what the natural bias was. This would be useful for any other non-traditional media source as well.
Both groups historically are liberal. That is why a comment against Bush is modded up, and a comment against any liberal (esp Clinton) is modded down.
I think it's fine for a place like
Each account should have settings for political alignment (liberal, independent, conservative, other), income level, age, and even gender. The breakdown should be in a chart on the side of
Then at least people who weren't familiar with
UC Berkeley student modders do your worst, I'm wearing my flamesuit.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I'm your regular run-of-the-mill pretentious journalist. I read the Washington Post every day. I read Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The National Review, Harpers and others. I find Time and Newsweek basically worthless. And I can't stand most television news.
I love Wonkette.
Wonkette is not journalism.
Her goal is not to inform, her goal is to entertain. Most importantly, she is upfront about this. She makes no proclamation that she will tell the whole truth. Her level of credibility is just a hair above The Onion and that's fine because she's entertaining and doesn't claim to be anything else.
Guess what: The people who read Wonkette know not to go to her for the news. Wonkette is just Entertainment Tonight for people who care about the stars of politics instead of the stars of hollywood etc. I couldn't care less if David Beckham had an affair, but I got a kick out of knowing that Mathew Yglesias was in Best Buy.
But, to get to why this is on Slashdot. Yes, the Internet is different. Previously, the news mediums available to us before were push only. They lectured to us. So, it was natural that articles looked like lectures.
The Internet instead is a conversational medium. As a result, much of it will inevitably look much more like what people are talking about, than a newspaper or even television.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Let's remember that Drudge's big breakthrough came when he revealed the Monica Lewinski scandal. This was a verified story that Newsweek
spiked after months of rigorous investigation by Michael Isikoff. Far from getting a pass on accuracy, Drudge was right about a story that mainstream media outlets were censoring for political reasons. It's all very well for these dinosaurs to accuse Drudge of a lack of accuracy, but the irony is that with his breaking news he's been correct and the vast majority of his other articles link to mainstream stories. Drudge is more of a news aggregator than anything else where the stories link to an eclectic mix of media outlets. Claiming he doesn't match their standards for rigor is a bit of a joke considering some of the unconfirmed nonsense that gets published by media outlets. These are the same media outlets who showed us the Iraqi Minister of Information day in and day out without so much as a comment about the veracity of his claims until the M1s rolled into the city. That's not unbiased or even handed reporting, these organizations had reporters advancing on Baghdad and new darned well the claims were false but never explicitly pointed it out.
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
That happened a long time ago.
We called it "Junior High School".
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
Whenever I am reading text and notice it using the word "evolutionist" it's like a lightbulb goes on, and it's suddenly clear why the preceding paragraphs were salted liberally with incoherent bogosity. Calling someone an "evolutionist" in this day and age is a bit like using "geosphericalist" as a pejorative in the 19th century. It's a waste of time arguing -- just smile and nod and back away slowly.
For anyone with legitimate interest in the arguments there's always talk.origins.