Filmmaker Gives Newspapers Bogus Stories To See If They Fact Check
from the guess-what-he-found-out? dept
Rose M. Welch alerts us to the news of a filmmaker who wanted to see how much fact checking newspaper do, so he started calling them with totally made up "tips" about celebrities, and discovered that many of them were quickly printed with little to no attempt to fact check them at all. To be fair, the stories were all sent to UK tabloids, and the tabs aren't exactly known for their thorough reporting standards -- but still, given how often we hear about how bad new media online publications are at basic fact checking, it's worth pointing out that just because you print on paper, it doesn't mean there's any more fact checking. At least with online stories, people can respond quickly (often in comments or on their own sites) and challenge things. In print, it's much harder to see what others are saying on the same topic.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
Filed Under: fact check, newspapers
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Nothing new
If you rely on the papers for anything more than gossip and football scores, which, surprisingly, are still reported without bias, than you deserve what you get.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
$50 bounty
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: $50 bounty
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: $50 bounty
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bogus reports from filmmaker
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Bogus reports from filmmaker
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Shield
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Real Story Is...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Same 20 years ago
Not a tabloid, and well before digital news stole the paper media's profits.
Nothing new here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fact checking
I still remember (with horror) an article in English that talked about some bad things that happened in Brazil, and said that a source had blamed it on drug dealers.
I read the SAME story in Spanish, which said the SAME thing, but then said that on further checking the reporter had found that the police were primarily responsible.
It appears the police had planted the "source" story to divert attention from their activities (all too common in the US as well, IMO).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]