Mort Zuckerman Points a Finger At Himself
Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report points a finger at bloggers for lack of factual accuracy:
Given the fact that the disseminators of blogs, such as Google, have a unique protection from legal liability for what is posted, the blogs often resort to blood sport in their commentaries on politics and life, with many repeating and reporting without fact checking….Now, I do not question Zuckerman's point that much factually incorrect information is posted on blogs. That is surely the case as Atrios points out.This new age of journalism is challenging the "trustee model" of journalism, where journalistic professionals served as gatekeepers, filtering the defamatory and the false.
It does seem a bit odd that it is Zuckerman who tries to make the argument that the professional media act as gatekeepers, filtering out false information through rigorous fact checking.
Take, for instance, this Zuckerman column decrying frivolous law suits. Zuckerman gives us a few outrageous examples of frivolous suits:
a woman throws a soft drink at her boyfriend at a restaurant, then slips on the floor she wet and breaks her tailbone. She sues. Bingo--a jury says the restaurant owes her $100,000! A woman tries to sneak through a restroom window at a nightclub to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She falls, knocks out two front teeth, and sues. A jury awards her $12,000 for dental expenses.There was just one little problem with those examples. Stephanie Mencimer in the Washington Monthly explains (or, if you prefer, I discussed the same issue here):
The print media, mostly opinion columnists, have proven even more gullible in publishing stories about lawsuits that are simply fictional. For instance, in June 2003, in a column entitled, "Welcome to Sue City, U.S.A.," U.S. News & World Report owner Mort Zuckerman claimed that "litigation has become our national pastime." As proof, he offered several examples of lawsuits that illustrated the nation's "enormous inflation of rights over responsibilities." (the examples listed above are cited)...Zuckerman's excuse for publishing false information is particularly interesting:The anecdotes were catchy. Unfortunately, they weren't true. The stories had been circulating in an email for two years and had made it into several mainstream news outlets, including another Zuckerman property, The New York Daily News, which had published an email containing one of the fake lawsuits in the sports section a year earlier (with no correction). When The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz called him on the U.S. News error, Zuckerman was unapologetic ... When contacted by The Washington Monthly, a spokesperson for Zuckerman refused to disclose the source of the lawsuit anecdotes or to offer an explanation as to why Zuckerman would publish anything from a spam email without checking it out first.
Ken Frydman, Zuckerman's spokesman, did not dispute that the pair of cases in the column two weeks ago were imaginary, but would not address whether the magazine will publish a retraction.So, Mr. Zuckerman publishes falsehoods without checking his facts. His excuse for doing so is that that the falsehoods had previously been published by other professional journalists (although Zuckerman provided no credit to such journalists when using their material)."These cases were reported in a variety of other reputable publications, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the London Telegraph, and Mr. Zuckerman could have cited dozens of other cases," Frydman says.
Zuckerman now has the brass to argue that professional journalists are gatekeepers who, by virtue of their rigorous fact checking, filter out false information.
Hmm..., move along, nothing to see here, let's talk instead about those bad, bad bloggers.
Comments
Well, he's also an idiot. He says: Given the fact that the disseminators of blogs, such as Google, have a unique protection from legal liability for what is posted, the blogs often resort to blood sport in their commentaries on politics and life, with many repeating and reporting without fact checking.
That statement is nonsensical, because while Google doesn't have liability for the content of the blogs that it hosts, the individual bloggers can still be held liable (for example, for libel). When I write things on my blog, I'm not sitting there thinking to myself "Ha ha! I can say whatever I damn well please and Google can't be held liable!" Silly man.
Posted by: raging red | November 29, 2005 11:19 AM
Zuckerman is offering some kind of top-down view -- he seems to imagine that any given journalist, like any given blogger, would automatically think, "Sweetness I can write whatever I want and no one will stop me!" in the absence of an editor-manager-figure (an assumption which reveals a lot about how he operates as an author.)
Posted by: Anonymous | November 29, 2005 12:27 PM
Let's not forget that this is the same "gatekeeper" media model that "embeds" reporters, dutifully repeats pentagon propaganda, and blindly accepts the truth of commercially produced "Video News Releases." For more on media bias during war time, I recommend the movie "Enemy Image" which you can torrent download here .
The only problem with blogging as a viable news media market is that so many people aren't really interested in the news so much as reading editorial work that confirms what they already believe anyway. For example, I tend to get the vast majority of my news at Common Dreams.
Posted by: Rhyleh | November 29, 2005 01:27 PM
"These cases were reported in a variety of other reputable publications, such as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the London Telegraph
As Stephen Colbert would say sure, it's not true, but it's been widely reported. That makes it fact-esque.
Posted by: Frederick | November 29, 2005 01:31 PM
For the truly perfect finish, Zuckerman should sue Google for disseminating his own falsehoods.
Posted by: tps12 | November 29, 2005 01:55 PM
Rhyleh,
Well put. I wish the corporate press would devote as much energy to fact-checking government and corporate figures as they do bloggers. But subjecting a politician's claims to the standard of factual accuracy, rather than sticking to the "he said, she said" paradigm would compromise their professional objectivity, don't you know.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | November 29, 2005 02:17 PM
To second what raging red said about this Zuckerman statement:
No, this is factually incorrect, as Zuckerman would know if he had done a little fact-checking. The disseminators of blogs have no unique protection; they have the same protection as the disseminators of newspapers and rags like US News and World Report. Or do I have my facts wrong, and people who run newsstands now have liablility for the libel, etc. in the magazines they sell? Is FedEx responsible for libel disseminated by them? Are the phone companies liable for slander promulgated over their lines? Hack.
Posted by: epistemology | November 29, 2005 03:55 PM
One of the best forums I've found for debunking these legal urban legends is the True Stella Awards (named for the woman who sued McDonald's over the hot coffee). It's a free subscription (or a paid Premium scub), at http://www.stellaawards.com.
Funny, thought-provoking, and well worth reading.
Why don't we all pitch in and get the Zuckster a gift subscription? I think it's $20.00.
Posted by: Andrew | November 29, 2005 04:50 PM
with many repeating and reporting without fact checking
it's called BLOGGING, reporting is what reporters do.
This guy must have a callous on the upside of his head.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 1, 2005 08:15 PM