Coursey on IP WITH NASTY EDITORS COMMENTS dhf

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

He sent this to me and I disagree djf

First newspapers often  do not check that well and they have  
exstensuive staff to do so.

But more important. Within 2 or three hours we had authentic  
information on how NPR operates and that this was an unintentional  
error on a stations part. HOWEVER IF I HAD THE RESOURSES TO CALL  
AWAY , iy mau jave been days to track down that info.

Sure online news has noise but the normal press has a bad case of  
ignoring some criticla news or news which is PC.

Also Coursey can unsub IP i

Dave


Begin forwarded message:

From: Aaron Dickey <ald () frantic org>
Date: September 23, 2005 3:53:26 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Coursey on IP


FYI... If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was talking about IP!  
--Aaron

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1862000,00.asp

and

http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1862256,00.asp

The Downside of 'Citizen Journalism'
September 22, 2005
By David Coursey

I am not a big fan of the "citizen journalism" being practiced on the  
Internet these days. One of the tenets of "real" journalism is that  
you don't distribute information that hasn't been checked. Citizen  
publishers are under no such obligation, so the information that  
winds up in blogs and distributed on mailing lists must always be  
considered suspect, even if sent with the best of intentions.

Why does this matter? Because false information, once distributed,  
can never really be called back. You can distribute a correction, but  
some number of people will never see it. To them, the original story  
will always be the truth. The nasty allegation will never be answered  
and questions will remain.

Responding to these questions and allegations takes someone's time  
and, frankly, most people have better things to do than respond to  
wacky Internet posts. And sometimes there can be so many posts that  
it's impossible to respond to them all. Or the question may never  
even get to a person capable of answering it. This is the information  
age's equivalent of justice delayed being justice denied.

The Internet holds quite an attraction for people who don't think  
things through and who offer their perhaps well-meaning but ill- 
informed speculation to the masses. These people should be checking  
their facts rather than putting out a question that should never have  
been asked in a public forum. Not that I have a problem with  
questions, people tell me I ask way too many of them. It's just that  
public questions can lead to erroneous conclusions.

I am writing because of an example I ran into a few days ago. In the  
great scheme of things, it's not a very big deal. It doesn't matter  
what mailing list this occurred on. It's the issue, not the  
individuals involved, that deserves discussion. I'll just say the  
list goes out to tens of thousands of readers and is mostly comprised  
of information sent to the list's moderator for redistribution.

Here's the post that concerned me. It regards National Public Radio.

"Subject: NPR Censors Katrina Report?

"A week or so ago, (this list) forwarded a personal memoir by two  
paramedics who were" treated badly by New Orleans authorities. (I am  
fuzzing this so as not to repeat a serious allegation I can't vouch  
for).

"While driving home yesterday, I chanced upon an interview with  
several Katrina survivors on our local NPR station during their  
regular Sunday afternoon feature. The second person interviewed was  
one of these paramedics, and just as she was getting into the really  
awful events she experienced, NPR cut the feed for that story, and  
replaced it with one from several months ago regarding poverty in  
Latin America. After about ten minutes of this new 'replacement', I  
turned off my radio.

"An e-mail inquiry to my local NPR station has so far gone unanswered.

The post leaves the reader thinking that NPR may have censored a  
report it somehow considered too negative to broadcast (I suppose),  
and the station is covering up by not answering the poster's e-mail.  
I suppose this is possible, but it is highly unlikely.

This message went to a big list, with lots of influential people on  
it (some of whom seem a tad paranoid at times), so the posting got  
forwarded to NPR, whose "head of communications" responded that the  
network didn't censor anything and has itself broadcast critical  
reports and tough post-Katrina interviews.

A more definitive answer came from the producers of the popular "This  
American Life" program which had, in fact, broadcast the interview in  
question on hundreds of stations and knew of no attempts to censor  
the broadcast. If a station had wanted to "censor" the program, it  
could have simply not carried it at all and replaced it with another  
week's episode. (NPR, by the way, does not distribute the program and  
has no say whatsoever in its content.)

Eventually, someone who understands broadcasting weighed in with the  
likely real answer: Many radio stations are run by computer,  
especially on weekends. Radio station computers, as I know from my  
own radio experience, sometimes screw up. Type a command wrong or hit  
a software glitch and a program can end right in the middle, just as  
seemed to have happened here.

This posting and what followed isn't the worst example of Internet  
nonsense I've come across. Everything here is totally innocent and  
well-intended.

In the old (pre-Internet) days, the poster might have called a  
newspaper to express his censorship concern. My bet is the newspaper  
would have checked the story out, probably learned about a computer  
screw-up at a public radio station, notified the NPR listener that  
their concern appeared unwarranted and that would be the end of things.

The newspaper would not have distributed such a story to tens of  
thousands of readers until it had something like an answer that  
supported the implied allegation of censorship. Why? Because many  
readers would accept the accusation as being "true" and never see the  
follow-up.

This question should never have been distributed to thousands of  
people without investigation or comment. But, once this nonsense was  
in the public domain it needed a response, which caused both the head  
of communications at NPR and a producer at "This American Life" to  
take the time to issue their organizations' response.

Over a period of days, this ill-informed question wasted a lot of  
people's time—some of whom will never figure out that NPR didn't  
censor anyone.

I don't believe the moderator of the list did anyone a favor by  
passing the question to such a large audience. There should have been  
some investigative work done and, if warranted, the results shared  
widely. As a newspaper editor, that's what I would have done. Such a  
course would have saved many people's time, would have prevented a  
small chip in NPR's reputation, and would have improved the  
Internet's credibility.

What I have described isn't a really big deal. While I can't prove  
censorship didn't take place—it's always hard to completely rule out  
any possibility—it seems like what we have is a well-intended  
question that didn't need to be so widely asked.

The harm done wasn't major and wasn't intentional on anyone's part.  
Fair-minded people can argue that no damage was done at all. But,  
Internet publishers should realize that sending 10,000 copies of an e- 
mail isn't that much different than throwing a newspaper in front of  
as many homes.

Newspapers and mainstream publications certainly have no an exclusive  
on quality content and credibility, but Internet publishers could  
still learn a lot from them.





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