5 ms·

No, they shouldn't just walk away. They should apply sound journalistic principles to investigate exactly how they came to the conclusion, and then publish that

No, they shouldn't just walk away. They should apply sound journalistic principles to investigate exactly how they came to the conclusion, and then publish that investigation with full disclosure. Not sure if I've ever seen a news organization do that though (minimal retractions in a place no-one looks doesn't count).

ghaff 8y ago
CBS Killian Papers pretty much. There have been some significant examples but there actually aren’t that many cases of a major pub running a “scoop” that no other major pub runs with as well that turns out to be flat out wrong. There are certainly examples of mainstream media as a whole getting behind a story like lead-up to Iraq War but this is something different.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Another one that comes to mind is This American Life with the iPhone Chinese factory story. They did an entire episode (hour long) and how/why the error happened.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    And still another is the Rolling Stone campus rape story. It does happen but when major media outlets are found to have published a major story that’s flat out untrue there does tend to be a pretty loud mea culpa.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vidarh 8y ago
  I think that's in large part because often many others will pile in by referring to the newspaper that ran it. I wouldn't count that in same class, as they're often "technically" not wrong in that they're reporting that "according to X, Y happened" rather than making the false claim that "Y happened". The fake Hitler diaries would be one of the really major examples of this, where Stern, Newsweek and the Sunday Times ran the primary stories, and lots of other publications ran stories about the stories in those three. And that's also a major example of the main sources taking a lot of flack afterwards, with firings, lawsuits, and books and movies about it afterwards, but it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves. E.g. Murdoch has suggested the Sunday Times actually profited from it in the long run as Stern paid them back what they paid for access, and it boosted their subscription numbers even after the hoax was revealed.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    >it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves As long as 1.) it's a rare event and 2.) the publication gives the appearance, and perhaps the reality of, throwing the guilty and those in the wrong place at the wrong time under the bus, putting better processes in place, apologizing profusely,and being very introspective about the whole affair, people tend to forgive and forget--or at least forget. And their peers probably have at least a bit of "there but for the grace..." about the whole thing anyway. I'm being a bit snarky about throwing people under the bus. Usually there are people who are guilty mostly in a "the buck stops here" sort of way. But, in most of the recent cases I can think of, there were individuals in the news organizations who so wanted stories to be true that they were at best inept in a way it's not clear they understood even in retrospect.
- pstuart 8y ago
  > CBS Killian Papers pretty much Meh. I'm in the camp that believes Karl Rove pulled off one of his greatest dirty tricks of all time.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    That would have been brilliant insofar as the Killian Papers pretty much blew up a legitimate news story, albeit one without quite such a visibly smoking gun. But I don't actually believe that.
    - CamperBob2 8y ago
      Nothing out of the ordinary for people like Roger Stone or Karl Rove. That's what they did for a living for decades, and they were (are?) very good at it.
  - ufmace 8y ago
    Presuming it was him, the story would go like "I'll create a blatantly forged document that confirms a narrative that CBS wants to push and send it to them. I expect they will publish it immediately with no fact checking whatsoever, double down when called out on it, and the entire rest of the mainstream media will stick behind them." Now if that's the story... I'm not saying Karl Rove is an angel or anything, but this seems like he's 10% bad and CBS news and every media source that stuck behind them is 90% bad.
    - pstuart 8y ago
      The genius of what I'm accusing him of is this: the story itself was real (Bush going AWOL; taking advantage of his father's position). Why not make a document that ostensibly validates that and bake in the fact that it was a forgery to be revealed so that all focus is on the forgery and not the facts that Bush shirked his service? It's a brilliantly devious move and exactly the type of thing Rove would do (e.g., bugging his own office and then accusing his opponent of the misdeed, etc. etc) https://theintercept.com/2015/10/27/george-w-bush-was-awol-but-whats-truth-got-to-do-with-it/ https://theintercept.com/2015/10/27/george-w-bush-was-awol-b... https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Rove-s-dirty-tricks-Let-us-count-the-ways-1246665.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Rove-s-dirty...

ghaff 8y ago

CBS Killian Papers pretty much. There have been some significant examples but there actually aren’t that many cases of a major pub running a “scoop” that no other major pub runs with as well that turns out to be flat out wrong. There are certainly examples of mainstream media as a whole getting behind a story like lead-up to Iraq War but this is something different.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
Another one that comes to mind is This American Life with the iPhone Chinese factory story. They did an entire episode (hour long) and how/why the error happened.
- ghaff 8y ago
  And still another is the Rolling Stone campus rape story. It does happen but when major media outlets are found to have published a major story that’s flat out untrue there does tend to be a pretty loud mea culpa.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vidarh 8y ago
I think that's in large part because often many others will pile in by referring to the newspaper that ran it. I wouldn't count that in same class, as they're often "technically" not wrong in that they're reporting that "according to X, Y happened" rather than making the false claim that "Y happened". The fake Hitler diaries would be one of the really major examples of this, where Stern, Newsweek and the Sunday Times ran the primary stories, and lots of other publications ran stories about the stories in those three. And that's also a major example of the main sources taking a lot of flack afterwards, with firings, lawsuits, and books and movies about it afterwards, but it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves. E.g. Murdoch has suggested the Sunday Times actually profited from it in the long run as Stern paid them back what they paid for access, and it boosted their subscription numbers even after the hoax was revealed.
- ghaff 8y ago
  >it's not clear if it actually harmed the newspapers themselves As long as 1.) it's a rare event and 2.) the publication gives the appearance, and perhaps the reality of, throwing the guilty and those in the wrong place at the wrong time under the bus, putting better processes in place, apologizing profusely,and being very introspective about the whole affair, people tend to forgive and forget--or at least forget. And their peers probably have at least a bit of "there but for the grace..." about the whole thing anyway. I'm being a bit snarky about throwing people under the bus. Usually there are people who are guilty mostly in a "the buck stops here" sort of way. But, in most of the recent cases I can think of, there were individuals in the news organizations who so wanted stories to be true that they were at best inept in a way it's not clear they understood even in retrospect.
pstuart 8y ago
> CBS Killian Papers pretty much Meh. I'm in the camp that believes Karl Rove pulled off one of his greatest dirty tricks of all time.
- ghaff 8y ago
  That would have been brilliant insofar as the Killian Papers pretty much blew up a legitimate news story, albeit one without quite such a visibly smoking gun. But I don't actually believe that.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    Nothing out of the ordinary for people like Roger Stone or Karl Rove. That's what they did for a living for decades, and they were (are?) very good at it.
- ufmace 8y ago
  Presuming it was him, the story would go like "I'll create a blatantly forged document that confirms a narrative that CBS wants to push and send it to them. I expect they will publish it immediately with no fact checking whatsoever, double down when called out on it, and the entire rest of the mainstream media will stick behind them." Now if that's the story... I'm not saying Karl Rove is an angel or anything, but this seems like he's 10% bad and CBS news and every media source that stuck behind them is 90% bad.
  - pstuart 8y ago
    The genius of what I'm accusing him of is this: the story itself was real (Bush going AWOL; taking advantage of his father's position). Why not make a document that ostensibly validates that and bake in the fact that it was a forgery to be revealed so that all focus is on the forgery and not the facts that Bush shirked his service? It's a brilliantly devious move and exactly the type of thing Rove would do (e.g., bugging his own office and then accusing his opponent of the misdeed, etc. etc) https://theintercept.com/2015/10/27/george-w-bush-was-awol-but-whats-truth-got-to-do-with-it/ https://theintercept.com/2015/10/27/george-w-bush-was-awol-b... https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Rove-s-dirty-tricks-Let-us-count-the-ways-1246665.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Rove-s-dirty...