Today Arthur Brisbane, the Public Editor of the NYT, asked his readers
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Well. As you can imagine, this unleashed a few hundred volleys in the comments to his post, most of them along the lines of “Yes, of course, you doofus. What are newspapers for if not to inform their readers accurately and honestly about the news?”
Mr. Brisbane followed up by saying “Wait wait! I meant, ‘should we report on the truth or falsehood of the ostensible facts in the body of the article in which we report those facts?'” To which his readers responded “We got it the first time, and yes, you doofus, you should. After-the-fact corrections or sidebars don’t have the same weight.”
I almost feel sorry for the guy, except that he wouldn’t have needed to ask the question in the first place if the NYT had regularly made it a practice to correct the BS politicians and pundits spew in the past.
Jay Rosen, noted press critic and journalism professor at NYU, has much more.
There was a situation a while back where some southern Republican politician gave, I think, a totally incorrect account of some battle. The published account pointed out the mistake – and the paper came under fire from people who maintained it was the paper’s responsibility to report statements, not to fact-check them.