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How Much is that Pulitzer in the Window?

November 14, 2006 at 14:57 | Print This Post Print This Post

From Think Progress: “I’m worried about bloggers,” says former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. “(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it’s repeated as fact.” Miller said blogs “don’t post corrections when they learn that what they have posted is wrong,” but added that she was “glad to welcome them as long as they agree to the standards.” When not helping blogs improve their correction standards, Miller peddled false intelligence from the White House and Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi that helped convince Americans that Iraq had WMD. Tip of the chapeau to Mathew.


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5 Responses to “How Much is that Pulitzer in the Window?”


  1. Michael Webster (14 comments.)
    November 14th, 2006 at 16:10

    But that is the point. Eventually accountability caught up to the New York Times; will it catch up or trip up popular blogs?


  2. Rob Hyndman (319 comments.)
    November 14th, 2006 at 17:06

    Actually, Michael, I think that’s very precisely not the point. Holding blogs accountable for factual inaccuracy is a little like asking your dinner guests to swear out an affidavit as they’re heading to the door. The NYT has taken hits precisely because it sells accuracy. Some blogs might purport to, and they have trouble coming if they can’t live up to the reputation they’re trying to create for themselves. But virtually all of them are there to express a point of view, and to live in the turbulent waters of our collective stream of consciousness. Beating them up for inaccuracy is little like whacking that (by now, harassed) dinner guest with an encyclopedia because of a factual error made somewhere between the pork roast and the coffee.

    I remain convinced that the vast majority of people can or soon will be able to tell the difference between what reliably purports to be factual, and what does not. For those who can’t, there’s always Fox.


  3. Michael Webster (14 comments.)
    November 14th, 2006 at 17:23

    I am hardly ever that accurate to be “precisely” not on point.

    There is no doubt that there will a vast amount of information posted with a casual attitude with respect to the factual truth.

    Our inaccurate, and soon to be ex, dinner guests may not appreciate having their words handed to them: but Google cache makes it possible for their words to haunt them, far past the normal due date. Thus, my observation that popular bloggers may find themselves tripped up, or hoisted on their previous posts.

    I think that this is a serious possibility whether or not the individual blogger holds truth in an special affinity -but, I should have been less cryptic in comment. The self correcting nature of the blogosphere may work faster than the editorial reviewers for the New York Times. May work faster- we shall see.


  4. Ben Lucier (1 comments.)
    November 15th, 2006 at 10:42

    Miller talks about bloggers not holding themselves to the same “standards” as journalists. For the most part, bloggers (Evans and Ingram exempted for obvious reasons) don’t have the training on what those standards are. In your travels, have you come across the standards Miller speaks of? As a beginning blogger myself, I’ve already made mistakes of my own that were not evident until pointed out to me. That’s to say that I would love to hold myself to the “standards” that Miller speaks of (except the part about going to jail for 85 days). :)

    What would a document of this type be called? Is there a standard doc, or would places like the Post, The NY Times and the Globe define their own?


  5. Rob Hyndman (319 comments.)
    November 15th, 2006 at 12:55

    There was some talk about that last year or the year before, but I haven’t heard anything more about it in months - an ethical code, as it were. I think the project ran out of gas …