May 25, 2006

6:33 PM

MEDIA MISTAKES?Byron Calame, public editor of The New York Times, wrote a piece recently about how a faulty Page One story went unchallenged. He notes that despite a questionable premise, the story went uncorrected for a week, and even provoked a piece of art on the Times' op-ed page. Calame's piece gives us a tiny bit of insight into editorial mistakes and correction policies in the media, particularly when challenged from the outside. You get the sense of a behemoth bureaucracy in motion, difficult to head off, harder yet to correct. The Times itself collected some of its more ridiculous errors in its book Kill Duck Before Serving a few years ago. But less amusing is what law professor Eric Muller found. In early May, he heard Fox News' Judge Andrew Napolitano telling a story meant to illustrate how out of control the federal government's commerce-governing powers have become. Though Muller researched the supposed case Napolitano reported and found nothing in the legal archives, and asked Napolitano for more details, Napolitano has yet to respond.
posted by etaoin (23 comments total)

A link which doesn't require registration.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 6:49 PM on May 25, 2006

Getting specific comment from Airbus was critical, but it never happened before publication. Imprecise questions to Airbus elicited mushy responses. And there's no written record to refute the Airbus claim that The Times failed to ask specific questions on whether the stand-up seat idea was alive.

This should be the key graph, but Calame just makes it more confusing. It sounds like the reporter spoke to Airbus people in the larger context of the story, but didn't ask specifically about the standing room-only airfare.

Or he could have asked the question and been told by the Airbus p.r. person that they'd have to get back to him, which is fairly common. If the p.r. person didn't get back by the reporter's deadline and the editors demanded the story, it was on them to get rid of the graph or send the story back to the reporter to double-check the information. That's not always going to happen in a busy newsroom. Nobody's perfect.

People like to talk about journalism in lofty terms, but it's really just a bunch of conversations condensed into a readable format, and these things happen. I suspect the delay in the correction is at least partly attributable to the fact that the story was written by a freelancer. And I am 100 percent positive the story bounced around through other publications without verification because the dumbasses who picked it up assumed the Times couldn't have gotten it wrong.

I don't know enough about the Eric Muller thing to weigh in there, but I have seen Andrew Napolitano on TV, and the man literally has no forehead.
posted by Alexandros at 6:51 PM on May 25, 2006

The lesson is not to trust mainstream media in the United States.

It is sloppy and often beholden to corporate (advertising) interests, just as media in third-world countries often operate at the behest of the ruling dictatorship. The only recourse for the honest freethinker is comparing stories with alternative media, which in most cases will often involve sourcing the news reports from other countries.

As I mention here the NY Times has an ombudsman to whom complaints can be addressed — a resource that the observant reader should take advantage of — though, perhaps unsurprisingly, apparently Fox News has no such representative.
posted by Mr. Six at 7:24 PM on May 25, 2006

This story was in the Times website "most emailed" and "most blogged" for longer then any other I have noticed since they added that to the front page. Perhaps this contributed to their reluctance to correct it?

Given the way news is moving to the web, they should take a cue from bloggers, and update stories as needed, with an explanation of the bottom.
posted by cell divide at 7:40 PM on May 25, 2006

You get the sense of a behemoth bureaucracy in motion, difficult to head off, harder yet to correct.

Another thing they have in common with the government of whom they are allegedy the watchdog.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:49 PM on May 25, 2006

The lesson is not to trust mainstream media in the United States.

It is sloppy and often beholden to corporate (advertising) interests, just as media in third-world countries often operate at the behest of the ruling dictatorship. The only recourse for the honest freethinker is comparing stories with alternative media, which in most cases will often involve sourcing the news reports from other countries.


The lesson here is journalists are human beings. If anything, the reporter's mistake in this case made a corporation look bad, not the other way around.

If you think the folks "alternative media" (what exactly do you mean by that, anyway?) are any less mistake-prone, you're going to be let down.

Note: I'm *not* saying the U.S. media doesn't have its share of problems, and I'm not saying many major media outlets are fearless watchdogs of corporate and government authorities, but if you're trying to make the point that they aren't, this is a bad example to use.
posted by Alexandros at 8:10 PM on May 25, 2006

It's generally a bad idea to ascribe to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by incompetence. But then I work for the MSM, so I'm probably lying.
posted by lexalexander at 9:03 PM on May 25, 2006

Dude, so Napolitano made a mistake. I think he's pretty goddamn smart otherwise. 99.999% of everything else he says is right on the money.
posted by obeygiant at 9:18 PM on May 25, 2006

(FYI, there's more background (predating Calame's column) on the Airbus story and the making of the correction here, in a piece which explains some internal NYT conflict on how the correction should have been made. And perhaps some of you, like Mr. Six above, will feel a bit more sympathy for the freelance reporter, who was pretty mortified by the whole thing—also, not sure I see how that paper is possibly beholden to corporate interests with regard to this situation either.)
posted by RJ Reynolds at 9:34 PM on May 25, 2006

Dude, so Napolitano made a mistake. I think he's pretty goddamn smart otherwise. 99.999% of everything else he says is right on the money.

Based on what?
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:11 PM on May 25, 2006

Byron Calame, public editor of The New York Times, wrote a piece recently about how a faulty Page One story went unchallenged.

Wow! Fautly Page One story? Went unchallenged? That's great, maybe...

Oh, right. Airplane seats.
posted by queen zixi at 12:22 AM on May 26, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's not a mistake when it's done intentionally.

Major corporate media outlets are very deliberate in their misleadings, diversions, and lies.

The NYT?
Let's talk about the Clinton's sex life on page one! Not like there's any really important news out there!
And you can't get started too early smearing any possible Dem Presidential candidate, can you Karl, slavemaster of corporate media outlets?
posted by nofundy at 6:42 AM on May 26, 2006

I think of the NYT as an elderly aunt who kind of fades in and out, though she had some class in her day, with that flapper get out and such, but she's still family, and we love her, even though she soils herself now and then.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:48 AM on May 26, 2006

The lesson is not to trust mainstream media in the United States.

That's certainly the lesson the right wing would want you to take away from this. Sorta like if the AMA published a document about the number of diagnostic mistakes made by doctors in a year -- surely in the hundreds of thousands, even in cases of life-threatening illness; then you could decide that the "lesson is" to never trust doctors, and that modern medicine is bunk.
posted by digaman at 8:18 AM on May 26, 2006

I wonder what Boeing's NYT advertisement account is worth...
posted by Skeptic at 8:20 AM on May 26, 2006

Sorta like if the AMA published a document about the number of diagnostic mistakes made by doctors in a year -- surely in the hundreds of thousands, even in cases of life-threatening illness; then you could decide that the "lesson is" to never trust doctors, and that modern medicine is bunk.

This is a very poor analogy.

Given concentrated corporate ownership of media, I would suggest that a media juggernault like the New York Times is in a greater position to do more harm by poor journalism than a small percentage of people hurt by a small percentage of bad doctors.

Worse, the AMA polices itself and its membership is policed by malpractice law. There is no editorial oversight of mass media, except for the odd morality fine handed down by the religious Right via the FCC.

When the New York Times gets an important story wrong, the consequences are catastrophic, cf. Judith Miller and the Iraq debacle.

The Airbus incident is symptomatic of a larger disease in mainstream media.
posted by Mr. Six at 8:47 AM on May 26, 2006

Another thing they have in common with the government of whom they are allegedly the watchdog.

You misspelled "lap".
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:58 AM on May 26, 2006

There is no editorial oversight of mass media, except for the odd morality fine handed down by the religious Right via the FCC.

Har har. Those fines do not constitute editorial oversight -- they constitute Republican talking-points.

In this day and age, there is more editorial oversight of mass media than in previous eras. You're soaking in it. MediaMatters is another fine example.

But you're certainly correct about this:

Given concentrated corporate ownership of media, I would suggest that a media juggernault like the New York Times is in a greater position to do more harm by poor journalism than a small percentage of people hurt by a small percentage of bad doctors.

And the Judith Miller citation is a great example.

You're absolutely right about increasingly centralized corporate ownership being a terrible threat to the credibility of mass media. In a certain sense, I completely agree with the statement, "The lesson is not to trust mainstream media in the United States." I don't take on faith anything I read in media -- or on blogs, for that matter. But there has been a concerted effort by people like Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin -- and oh yes, Donald Rumsfeld and the White House -- to discredit mass media so they can substitute their own snake-oil, such as the assertion that things are going great in Iraq, but the good news never finds its way into the newspapers.

I'm very wary of that. It's very much like their concerted effort to discredit science on matters like global warming and evolution.
posted by digaman at 9:10 AM on May 26, 2006

I'm not sure I would put much faith in blogs as watchdogs of mass media outlets. It is too easy for people to discredit any blog as a fly-by-night astroturf operation; who knows where the recent attempt to discredit former Pres. Carter is coming from?

I'm very wary of that. It's very much like their concerted effort to discredit science on matters like global warming and evolution.

Agreed. We live in a system that, from the top down, rewards ignorance to ensure docility from the masses, or least get them squabbling with each other over who is right or wrong on these issues. Meanwhile, criminal behaviors at the top are largely ignored. Very clever setup.
posted by Mr. Six at 9:45 AM on May 26, 2006

I'm not sure I would put much faith in blogs as watchdogs of mass media outlets

Again, it's a matter of which blogs. Some blogs have a high record of accuracy, and others don't -- just like mainstream media outlets. I hesitate to make sweeping generalizations, which would be like saying "Movies are crap these days." Are there a lot of crap movies these days? Inarguably yes. But...
posted by digaman at 10:17 AM on May 26, 2006

You misspelled "lap".
posted by PinkStainlessTail

Excellent.
posted by nofundy at 11:28 AM on May 26, 2006

"Napolitano made a mistake"

If by "mistake" you mean lied

watch me make a mistake.....I am the king of Bhutan, my eyes are made of platinum.

If you say something you know to be false, it is called pulling something out of your ass, or bullshit, not a mistake.
posted by Megafly at 11:56 AM on May 26, 2006

there is some level of error in every story...the media would more honorably remind the consumer that the version of events they present is only a version of events and encourage seeking out multiple viewpoints...media outlets seem too happy to allow the consumer to assume that the information provided is all one needs to know to come to a reasonable conclusion...

...i may have used this example once upon a time, but i thought the show 48 hours demonstrated this really well...i don't know if the show is still on, but they would do a full one-hour story on some big crime, and for the first half of the show they would present the story in such a way as to allow you to form conclusions in one direction (as to innocence/guilt or whatever), and then halfway through the show they would make kind of a reversal and guide you in the other direction...i think they considered it more a gimmick than anything, but it was a nice illustration of how information is manipulated...

a really good way to see the mismatch between reality and the story is to have something written/broadcast about you...even if it is something positive and flattering, you will be a bit surprised at how much of it is (probably more often unintentionally) inaccurate
posted by troybob at 12:54 PM on May 26, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]