Slashdot Mirror
Wired Amends Stories With Fabricated Quotes
SiliconEntity writes "Wired Online has been forced to correct dozens of stories in the wake of disclosures that reporter Michelle Delio may have fabricated quotes. Wired has published over 700 stories by Delio since 2000, and in a review of 160 of the most recent ones, 24 were found to have quotes that could not be confirmed. Several of the Wired stories being questioned were discussed on Slashdot, including Spyware on My Machine? So What?, Minniapple's Mini Radio Stations, The Masters of Memory Lane, and probably many more. Wired is not the only one to get burned; MIT Technology Review and InfoWorld have also had to retract or alter stories written by Delio." Update: 05/10 19:20 GMT by Z : Altered to clarify Wired's actions.
After everyone finishes watching Revenge of the Sith, go watch Shattered Glass.
Hayden Christiansen does a great job in it, and it's a great movie (and true
story/book too..)
While it would be difficult to check every source for every story, not checking them leads less-than-scrupulous journalists into temptation. Why not have a publication select a number of sources at random and check them? Wouldn't this go a long way towards "keeping honest people honest"?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
It seems we just can't trust most of the mainstream media today. It seems that schools that teach journalism skip teaching about integrity, ethics, and the responsibility for reporters to be objective.
I think I'll just stick to Groklaw and forget the rest of the press.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The recent cases of reporters fabricating newstories only highlights how poor the editorial oversight is in the American newspaper industry. Most papers just put their news divisions on auto-pilot and never fact check, let alone spell check anything. I have seen an increase in shoddy writing and poorly attributed quotes since the mid-1980s. Because the larger American public doesn't seem to give a rats-ass, nothing gets done.
This is a hand wringing exercise by the American press. Readership has and will continue to fall off in favor of other news outlets, robbing the public of the detail that is required to make informed political decisions.
Great news for the rabid, camera-mugging politicians.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Have their fellow reporters MetaModerate the articles. Each day you check the facts of ten randomly selected articles by your fellow reporters. Heck, small independent, free publications could MetaModerate each other.
Slashdot, and other similar sites, are a little different because the whole point is to foster discussion. if someone invents a quote on the spot, or chooses a headline that doesn't fit the story, or whatever there are plenty of people that are willing to point that out. That's the point of Slashdot, it's more of a forum for discussion, than a news source (although once you get enough comments it becomes easy to do a little research and make your own informed decisions).
Michelle, on the other hand, was supposed to be reporting "news." It's often just as biased, but it's supposed to at least be verifiable. You might not agree with the conclusion, but not the facts that were presented. Heck, even on Slashdot the editors don't just make stuff up so that it fits their story.
That's more than a story every three days, including weekends, for over 5 years. And that's just for Wired - it doesn't include articles written for other publications!
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but it seems there should have been the suspicion that someone who can discover, investigate and report on a newsworthy phenomenon every 2.5 days for 5 years straight might be cutting corners somewhere.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is it that some kinds of bad journalism, like fabricating quotes, is career suicide, but Bob Novak can leak a CIA agent's identity and collect multiple paychecks?
Why don't the "journalists" who ignore real stories (the Bush/Blair "smoking gun" memo and the "misplaced" $9 billion in Iraq) in favor of sensationalism like runaway brides and missing white children lose their credibility?
There's a lot more wrong with the state of journalism in the U.S. than fictional quotes. Roger Ailes meeting with the Whitehouse to "shape" press coverage for example.
-dameron
... it's not so much that editors don't fact-check, but that those quoted don't get the chance to fact-check. I've been interviewed a number of times, but I've never gotten to see the final text before publication. I think reporting would be much better if, once stories were written, those mentioned/quoted in the story had a chance to review what the article says and offer feedback to the reporter and editor. This could clear up a lot of misunderstandings and misquotes that neither party intended.
Bruce
I think it's unfair to condemn the entire American media for this.
Journalism is no different than other professions. Most people care about their craft. Some don't. And the ones that don't are the ones that do the most damage.
We in the media always hear about how we never report on all the airplanes landing safely, right? Well, does the public praise us for all the stories that were reported correctly? Of course not. It's our job to get things right.
Don't get me wrong. There is plenty wrong with journalism today (big egos and political agendas are at the top) but most reporters I know got into this business for the same reason I did: passion for the job.
Most of us care and respect our work.
It's equally possible that the reporter in question is just lazy about notetaking or maintaining contact information.
Or its possible that, when going through a list of 700 contacts (if there's only one/story) compiled over 5 years, that 24 people moved or changed a phone number or otherwise couldn't be contacted.
I'm really at a loss as to how this is even newsworthy.
In the 20's and 30's they were the mouthpeice of business.
In the 40's and 50's they were conduits for propoganda.
The 60's and 70's were all about counter culture.
The 80's and 90's they were back in the pockets of business.
Journalism, in short, is a very shallow reflection of society as a whole. It always has been. It always will be.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The title of this story, Wired Amends Stories With Fabricated Quotes, is disingenuous at best. I could find no statement anywhere that the quotes in these articles were indeed fabricated. They simply state that the sources could not be confirmed, because they are anonymous. Now, if you decide you want to read between the lines and treat "unconfirmed" as "fabricated", that's certainly your right. But to put such a statement into a story headline only adds to slashdot's reputation as inflammatory and of questionable accuracy and motive.
Perhaps we need to see a headline on some other "news" site entitled "Slashdot Headline About Unconfirmable Quotes Cannot Be Confirmed".
If you *are* a VP or higher (or local equivalent), it'll generally mean that you leave with a massive pay off and complete freedom to screw up at a whole new company.
Not that I'm bitter that my company's last chairman oversaw wasting literally billions of pounds (Sterling) of money, yet left with a pay off in the millions of pounds, while the ordinary employees are denied pay rises year after year...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You don't need to rub libstick on a herring. Just feed it the lipstick. Lipstick already has herring in it. They put herring fish scales in lipstick to give it sparkle.
So every time you kiss your girlfriend, you're essentially kissing a fish.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
The odd thing is that I never had any problem getting a quote for any article I ever wrote. If you can't talk to the person, you can almost always find an attributable, published source for the content. I wrote some articles for a weekly music mag when I got out of college, and most folks were pleased to be quoted. One thing that gets overlooked is that editors sometimes want to see your notes. If you are quoting a source that wants to remain anonymous, you should always feel comfortable with sharing that person's identity with your editor. Taking good notes is really important, too, especially if you want to write a followup piece or get back in touch with a source again later. Respectful quoting of sources makes it all easier.
Quoting can be a rather touchy business, with grey areas, though. Sometimes you can give a full quote, but your editor will trim it back to save space or make it leaner. Regardless, getting quotes is just a matter of doing the legwork, making some cold calls, or developing sources that can hook you up with other sources. With deadline pressure, you may run the risk of not having enough meat in your story and having it miss press-time, but most writers learn the lesson and work hard at getting the necessary meat in at the next go-round.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
CEOs are often fired when companies do very poorly, just like head coaches are often fired when teams do very poorly in a season. Does this mean the CEOs or the head coaches are the reason their company/team sucked? Ask most sports fans, and they will likely argue not. The problem is, the CEO/coach is the easiest scapegoat, regardless of where the problem actually lies. Maybe the problem is the bench sucked all year -- i.e. the employees. Maybe not. But the fact is, head coaches and CEOs sign contracts that often stipulate how long they will work, and whether the company must pay them bonuses or buyout their contract if they want to fire the person.
Without these types of contracts, for many reasons, you will not attract top CEOs that want to guarantee their income. And due to their (usually good) track record, the market allows this to happen.
the ordinary employees are denied pay rises year after year...
Boohoo. Get a different job. No one is forcing them to work for that employer. If the employer is really that bad, and it can't keep good employees because of this, they'll change. Happens all the time.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.