Over in the Guardian‘s blogging section there’s an interesting question about whether professional blogs need to try harder for accuracy. I’m not a professional blogger, I’m not a journalist and so I don’t really have a major opinion about this, but I will say one thing:
So often when I read a mainstream media story about something that I know about, it scares me how vague, inaccurate or downright fabricated it is.
It makes you wonder if the accuracy is similar in those articles where you DON’T know the background or the reality. Fact-checking for the mainstream media appears to just consist of calling up some intern in the office in question and getting them to agree to your representation of events. I’m not sure that this is something anyone should be aspiring to mimic.
Comments (3) Permalink
April 6th, 2005 at 10:39 PM
Yes to all, Meri. I often have the same thought when reading tech articles in one of the numerous pull out sections in our paper, the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ve also had the experience of being “interviewed” by such publications, and was delighted/horrified by the way my off the cuff words were turned into what would be interpeted as gems of wisdom by an innocent 🙂
This process happens most overtly in all those sections about IT, home improvement, personal finance, cars etc etc. And that’s one thing. The scary thing is when you see it happening in the “real news” section of the paper. I read an excellent book once, “Toxic Sludge is Good for You”, which explained the scary connection between the PR industry and the media. Ultimately, it’s all driven by financial considerations on the part of the news outlet: doing proper research and applying your own intelligence and what you learned in your communicatins degree to create a true story? Expensive. Stitching together a few of the numerous press releases on your desk every morning? Cheap. Which will win when you have a pliant and apathetic audience?
Anyway, this book is well worth a read, check it out at Amazon.
April 9th, 2005 at 11:04 AM
Glad I’m not the only one who sees it! I’ll be sure to check the book out — but at the moment I’m trying to limit my Amazon spending, both because the final year project demands time over new books and because we’re buying a house in July ::eek::
April 21st, 2007 at 9:02 AM
Mainstream media everywhere is a profit making business tool today. The ethics and facts associated with news earlier were fast fading.Imagine reading a news story that describs about a tragedy with death toll 50, whereas the same story in a different newspaper records only 10 deaths. For the readers without knowledge of the background and reality it is realy a hard time to anticipate the veracity of the story.