Dewey Defeats Edwards... Yet Another News Screwup
from the itchy-trigger-fingers dept
The rush to publish first is making for an awful lot of Dewey Defeats Truman style stories showing up this year. Earlier this year, USA Today published a story on their site with the wrong candidate winning the reality TV show The Apprentice. Last month, a Tampa paper incorrectly reported that their own hometown hockey team had lost the Stanley Cup, when, in fact, they had won. The latest is that the NY Post is running into some trouble for reporting that John Kerry picked Dick Gephardt to be his running mate, when the reality is that he picked John Edwards. What's interesting, though, is that the NY Post has simply deleted the incorrect story from their website, without a notice, explanation or apology. This certainly raises questions about how the press handles mistakes online. It's a running joke in the news media how they publish huge mistakes on page one, and retract them two weeks later in tiny print hidden in the "corrections" section somewhere in the middle of the paper. However, in an age of instant publication (where people can link to you right away), it seems like a more reasonable thing to do is to admit that you were wrong and post an explanation at that location, rather than simply "disappearing" the story and pretending it never happened.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
What about movies?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spiderman 2.1.5
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: What about movies?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Publicity Stunt?
As for the reputation of the news media as a whole, I think it is already in the sewer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
disappearing news stories
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Incorrect headline
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Incorrect headline
[ link to this | view in chronology ]