A reporter was trying to interview my mother about my sister. My mother said, "It's not that we don't think you're important but ...". This wound up in print as, "It's...that we dont think you're important."
Honestly, whoever did this is a failure at their job. This can't be a common practice because it's so blatantly wrong. Even Reddit commentors don't get upvoted for crap like this.
As a newspaper journalist, I can say: You're simply wrong. That isn't standard practice, isn't taught in J-school, and will most likely get you fired on the spot from even a marginally reputable publication.
I've been reported-on by Wired News. Same guy who invented the claim that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. He wasn't fired for either story.
Did he explicitly make you say the direct opposite of what you actually said? Because that's really weird and unusual even when somebody is explicitly lying (as opposed to just mischaracterizing something, which is something people do in conversation all the time).
And is this one guy somehow the "standard"? Because it sounds like you had one or two bad experiences and decided to generalize your feelings to an entire profession. We've all run into a bad ______ who we can't understand how he still has a job, but that doesn't mean ______ as a whole are bad. (Fill in "journalists," "programmers," "waiters," "doctors" or pretty much anything else.)
I'm not familiar with that guy or with Wired's editorial standards in general, but I do think you're being unreasonably broad in a way that you wouldn't be if, say, you'd met a bumbling computer scientist.
I'm sorry, but I have to agree with Eliezer; I've known the details behind a half dozen stories or so personally, and in almost every case in the MSM there have been factual errors reported as truth.
One time is an anecdote; two times starts to be compelling. 6/6 times has a reasonable level of statistical significance.
FWIW, I'm somewhat convinced that a majority of computer programmers would fall under the general umbrella of "bumbling," though I don't think I'd use that term. "Marginally competent" might fit the bill better.
Out of the ~20 interviews I have witnessed and seen written up NONE of them where completely accurate. And I am not talking about simple mistakes, but deliberately spicing things up.
How many marginally reputable publications are still around? I've seen NYT issue retractions before along these lines, no word on whether anyone was sacked for it.
The fact that a newspaper doesn't habitually discuss its HR matters in print is not relevant to whether blatant falsehood is "standard practice" in journalism.
The fact that you saw the retraction should tell you that kind of writing does not meet the paper's standard. Editors don't enjoy writing notices to the effect of "Oops, I totally failed at my job there." They do it because the alternative is an even worse blow to the paper's integrity.
But they're reporters. Getting at the truth, or something close to it, often helps them do their job, but it isn't their job. Their job is getting attention. How that attention is monetised is an ever changing thing, but it's attention not truth that they're after.
How much personal exposure have you had to journalists? They generally are smart enough that they could get a facile grasp on a technical issue in the limited time they have if they really wanted to, but it's rarely a wise use of their time. Human interest, nearest cliche, drama, all of these bring more eyeballs. High quality journalism will get you better quality (richer) attention but there are a lot more people who read US News, or the Sun, or Die Bild than read quality press.
I have no idea how common that is. However that incident taught me why people say, "No comment" to the media. Short. Sweet. Can't be misquoted out of context.
Headline: btilly refuses to rule out raping children
Next week they'll ask whether you're running for president, and if you don't comment on that then the cover of Time will be a picture of your face with the caption "Is America Ready For a Child-Raping President?"
Some countries have institutions that you can forward a complaint to, but the result usually doesn't carry any significant impact other than acknowledging the transgression.
Depends on the country. In Canada, it is illegal for news organizations to report on anything less than the truth. However, this is why these same organizations are lobbying for this law to be repealed. In the US, no such law exists, ala FOX may get away with any lie they choose as long as they fall short of libel (unless the individual is a public official).
In Japan, there is evidence of collusion between news organizations and both political parties/figures and corporate sponsors. This leads to actual censorship in the news. So while blatant lies such as those found in Vanity, may not be a prevalent, it is clear that in some countries stories important news would never even have the ring of full disclosure.
When quoting it is permissible to use ... to indicate that you omitted part of the sentence. Standard grammar guides also say that when you end your sentence on a quote, the punctuation mark should move inside of the quotes. Even if it wasn't originally the end of the sentence.
That is exactly what the journalist in question did. The omitted section of sentence was the word not, and it appeared at the end of a sentence.
I don't have a style manual in front of me, but here are some sources that disagree.
If words are left off at the end of a sentence, and that is all that is omitted, indicate the omission with ellipsis marks (preceded and followed by a space) and then indicate the end of the sentence with a period … .http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/ellipsis.htm
The Chicago Manual of Style says that "other punctuation [besides the ellipsis, that is] may be used on either side of the three ellipsis dots if it helps the sense or better shows what has been omitted." Then, later, it says "When the last part of a quoted sentence is omitted and what remains is still grammatically complete, four dots — a period [or exclamation/question mark] followed by three ellipsis dots — are used to indicate the omission." And finally, "Three dots — no period — are used at the end of a quoted sentence that is deliberately and grammatically incomplete."http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/grammarlogs2/grammarl...
Wikipedia implies strongly that The Chicago Manual of Style, as well as the MLA and the Bluebook, have different syntactic rules for using ellipsis within a sentence versus at the end of the sentence. That makes no sense if Retric is correct in his/her claim about ellipsis only being licit at the end of a sentence.
These sources appear to confirm my uneducated belief, which agrees with btilly, that ellipses may be used to mark any omission, of any size, including within a sentence or spanning sentences (wp's comment on CMOS implies omitting entire paragraphs is legal).
In Canada, it is illegal for news organizations to report on anything less than the truth.
Not exactly -- it's against the law to publish facts that the publisher knows to be false. So the standard isn't truth, it's honesty.
It's very hard to prove a journalist is being deliberately misleading. So it's only been used in the case of Holocaust deniers and even then the Supreme Court ruled that the law was not compatible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The government has shifted the false news law to being a regulatory requirement for broadcasters, but it's unclear whether this isn't still unconstitutional.
FOX News, in my estimation, does seem to cross the line when it comes to repeating statements they know (or should know) to be false, often over the course of several days. So I can see why they want even the regulation withdrawn.
Sorry, but it happened in the mid-80s. The newspaper it happened in was The Victoria Times-Colonist. The journalist in question just would not give up trying to get access to my family, and in the end we wound up changing phone numbers 3 times.
In short, you'd be amazed at what happens to the families of movie stars.
Honestly, whoever did this is a failure at their job. This can't be a common practice because it's so blatantly wrong. Even Reddit commentors don't get upvoted for crap like this.