Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Guardian and the Snowden Leaks
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting and thoughtful article in the New Yorker about the inner workings of the Guardian newspaper. It explains a lot about why the Snowden files ended up there and not elsewhere. Given all the snark on Slashdot about the sorry state of modern journalism, it is well worth a read to see one organization that got it right. An illustrative quote about Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor: 'He has a really useful piece of equipment that most editors don't have, which is a spinal column.' I would encourage everyone to read this, and if you support the type of journalism the Guardian has been engaging in, think about buying a subscription. The article also talks about the financial side of the newspaper business, and real journalism is not going to happen unless somebody pays for it."
They say "real journalism" but in my experience, the "real journalists" never really seem to get most things accurate. Every time I've been aware of the events behind a particular story (in some cases, being involved in the story) the "journalists" always seem to miss important details or flat out have some details wrong (for example, a plane crash one of my classmates was involved in, it was reported that all passengers died when in fact there was a survivor.)
The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.
The Blogosphere woudn't know what real investigative journalism is (and unfortunately they are not the only ones since most traditional newspapers have forgotten what journalism is. Hint : it is not government PR) if they were hit by a 10 foot pole.
Thank god some good actors still exist in the US and abroad. Propublica in the US and The Guardian in the UK. In France Le Canard Enchaîné. While Le monde and Le Figaro may seem independent they survive thanks to government grants. So they'll never ever tell the whole story. In Italy ha no one. Each newspapaer is more corrupt than the next, and all all of them receive government aid.
Same here. The dozen or so times I've known details about something reported in a newspaper they've gotten pretty much everything wrong. I wouldn't trust them to spell their own name right let alone properly report on an event. What's in the newspaper is complete fiction when compared to reality.
You could go so far as to say that if a news outlet claims to be free from bias, they probably aren't doing journalism. Because they probably mean that they present "balanced" stories, meaning not neutral, reality-based stories, but rather stories that always present two and only two sides to an issue, even if the only proponent for one side is an obvious idiot or crook, and even when there are four sides with equally valid points to make.
Except wikileaks (and Assange himself) is already known to embellish the truth, or even outright fabricate it. For example, what they claimed were cameras in that "collateral murder" video were in fact weapons. I'm not even an expert and I clearly saw both Kalashnikov and RPG being carried by those people walking - I don't know how anybody could mistake those for cameras. Assange himself admitted that his intent is to cause outcry, even if he has to lie about it.
All of which are false (those in fact were cameras, held by the two reporters named Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh working for Reuters), more info here. I think we have additional evidence that in fact bloggers are a much worse source of news than reporters. Instead tending to reinforce the beliefs and opinions of those that seek them out rather than provide accurate commentary. Slashdot, please mod AlphaWolf_HK down.
W&B worked for the Washington Post, not the NYT.
Fox is more factual than the BBC? I'm not claiming that the BBC is "good" mind you, but Fox has as much credibility to me as "The Star". This is the company that fought up through the US Supreme Court that "News is Entertainment" and that they had no journalistic responsibility to show people factual information on the "News." Sadly they won...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.