Misadventures In Online Journalism

An anonymous reader writes "Paul Carr, writing for TechCrunch, has posted his take on some of the flaws inherent to today's fast-paced news ecosystem, where bloggers often get little or no editorial feedback and interesting headlines are passed around faster than ever. His article was inspired by a recent story on ZDNet that accused Yahoo of sharing the names and emails of 200,000 users with the Iranian government; a report that turned out to be false, yet generated a great deal of outrage before it was disproved. Carr writes, 'Trusting the common sense of your writers is all well and good — but when it comes to breaking news, where journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone is paranoid about being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too easily become the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; we get excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog and call it news. And then within half a minute — bloggers being what they are — the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact that can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"

Quote attribution incorrect - C. H. Spurgeon's

[Anonymous Coward]

It is ironic that the summery which blasts the misinformation of bloggers gets quote attribution wrong: "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on" is usually attributed to Mark Twain but the quotation was delivered in a sermon titled "Joesph attacked by the archers" in 1855 by C. H. Spurgeon! - Most misinformation I guess. ;-) - http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0017.htm

Re:functional reputation systems

[Animats]

peer-weighted reputation...

Peer-weighted reputation, like "web of trust" systems, won't work if the "peers" are anonymous. Otherwise, we get link farms and similar forms of bulk spamming.

Even without anonymity, imagine Rush's "dittoheads" as a source of authority for news.

Churchill "quote" is a fake - actually Callaghan

[fantomas]

Oh the irony. Slashdot posts a story about bloggers not checking their stories and says:

"This is the reality of the blogosphere, where Churchill's remark: that "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on" is more true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.'"

It looks like you didn't check your reference, like the bloggers you accuse.
It seems that the original quote was by British Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in the 1970s, not Winston Churchill, and he said "boots" not "pants".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3288907.stm [bbc.co.uk]

In the UK "pants" means "underwear" and not "trousers" as in the USA. Was Callaghan taking a quote from Churchill talking about underwear? I don't know. I'd welcome further reference hunting....

Re:Dan Rather *still* works as a "journalist"

[Concerned Onlooker]

This is a joke, right? Dan Rather was castigated by the media at the time. Your attempt at Swift Boating the entire field of journalism is gutsy, however.

Re:Quote attribution incorrect - C. H. Spurgeon's

[clickety6]

And even then the quotation is based on an earlier proverb and there are earlier printed versions of it e.g. "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it" Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, 9 Nov. 1710 or "Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on", Portland (Me.) Gazette, 5 Sept 1820

Re:Not the biggest problem we face in journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault [ajph.org]
Branas et al., 10.2105/AJPH.2008.143099,
American Journal of Public Health.

Abstract:

Objectives. We investigated the possible relationship between being shot in an assault and possession of a gun at the time.

Methods. We enrolled 677 case participants that had been shot in an assault and 684 population-based control participants within Philadelphia, PA, from 2003 to 2006. We adjusted odds ratios for confounding variables.

Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P<.05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P<.05).

Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.

Huh. I guess fact-checking is important.

Re:On posting

[mathx314]

Here's the video proof, by the way: Youtube link [youtube.com].