26 May 2003

NY Times credibility watch

Mickey Kaus is finally, actually shocked at the shoddiness of journalism at the NY Times. I will quote extensively because Kaus doesn't have permalinks. That's shoddy in a different way.
The sensational news from yesterday's Editor's Note isn't so much that the New York Times' Rick Bragg fraudulently suggested he was present when a quaint oysterman spouted quaint, perfect quotes as he pushed his quaint boat over Apalachicola Bay (if, in fact, this ever happened at all). As Jack Shafer notes, Bragg has been an editor-protected scandalette-waiting-to-happen for years. But I'm genuinely shocked--not for-show shocked and not "shocked, shocked"--at the apparent complaints from other Times reporters that they're now confused because they routinely rewrite the reporting work of stringers (non-Times freelancers) and slap their own bylines at the top! Blair was arguably an aberration. This seems to be systemic. According to the New York Post's Kelly and Barack:
Many Times staffers said they were surprised by the note, since it is common for Times reporters to use material from stringers without giving credit.

"People write off memos filed by stringers a lot," said one insider. "The policy was that the person writing the story got the byline." [Emphasis added.]

[…]

It turns out we weren't reading the reporting of the famous, cream-of-the-profession Times employees, but the reporting of unidentified "stringers" we've never heard of. ... Conventional journalists sometimes sneer at blogs because there's no way for a reader to know whether what a random, unknown person says on his Web site is true. But it sounds as if the Times is not so different from a blog after all--what you are reading is really the work of random, unknown "legs" and stringers.

Then Kaus lets fly with the real zinger:
Of course, in other ways the Times and the typical blog are very different forms of jounalism. One obsessively reflects the personal biases, enthusiasms and grudges of a single individual. The other is just an online diary!
Posted by orbital at 10:31 AM | View 0 TrackBacks | Trackback URL