Should Have Known Better Than To Trust The NY Times: China 'Protest' Hangups Story Is Bunk

from the they-want-me-to-pay-for-this? dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about a report in the NY Times of people in China having their phone calls cut off mid-call when someone says the word "protest." In our comments, many people questioned whether or not this was true, and with good reason. It now turns out that the story appears to be complete bunk. A bunch of folks in China have been testing this and can find no evidence to support it. In fact, one of the reporters who worked on that article commented on that link to say that he, too, tested it and could not confirm it. Yet... the NY Times published it anyway.

Yes, we should have known better than to trust a NY Times trend piece that opens with a cute and perfect anecdote. I apologize.

In fact, we've called the NY Times out for this same thing in the past. They love to start stories with "perfect" anecdotes that do not appear to have much basis in reality. But they want us to sign up for their paywall to pay for this kind of "reporting"?

Filed Under: censorship, china, fact checking, journalism, protests
Companies: ny times

Why Does The Myth Persist That Wikileaks Is Indiscriminately Leaking Thousands Of Documents?

from the check-your-facts dept

A few weeks ago, we called out the fact that many in the press continued to falsely report that Wikileaks had indiscriminately released all 250,000+ State Department cables that it had in its possession. In fact, this was the key claim that many have used to condemn Wikileaks and to suggest that it's neither a journalistic entity nor a whistleblowing entity. The problem is, this is false. To date, Wikileaks has only dribbled out approximately 2,000 of the cables and nearly every one has been in conjunction with various mainstream publications and do include redactions of sensitive info.

NPR just got around to correcting the error, even though many of its "hosts, reporters and guests have incorrectly said or implied that WikiLeaks recently has disclosed or released roughly 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables."

And yet the myth persists. It's quite amazing, for example, that the Wall Street Journal allowed famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams to publish this attack on Wikileaks as being "different" than Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (a case for which Abrams represented the NY Times). The crux of the "differences" that Abrams highlights is the fact that Ellsberg withheld four out of 47 volumes of the Pentagon Papers, to be published at a later date, and then says:

Can anyone doubt that he would have made those four volumes public on WikiLeaks regardless of their sensitivity? Or that he would have paid not even the slightest heed to the possibility that they might seriously compromise efforts to bring a speedier end to the war?

As Jack Shafer deftly points out over at Slate, why, yes, it's quite easy to doubt that assertion of Abrams, since Wikileaks has so far withheld much more than Ellsberg did. As Shafer notes:

Perhaps because Abrams listens to too much NPR or doesn't read the New York Times very closely, he's under the misconception that WikiLeaks has published all 251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables it claims to possess. It hasn't, as NPR noted in a correction yesterday. WikiLeaks has released just 1,942 cables, which makes Assange's ratio of released-documents to withheld-documents much, much smaller than Ellsberg's. By that measure, Abrams should regard Assange as a more conscientious leaker than Ellsberg, not less conscientious.

Abrams' other reasons for slamming Wikileaks seem self-contradictory. He complains about the "harm" that these leaks will do, while at the same time insisting many of the documents shouldn't be released because they show no wrongdoing. Again, Shafer debunks this thoroughly:

Does he mean to imply that publishing state secrets can be defended only if they catch the government murdering, stealing, kidnapping innocents, fouling pristine rivers, or betraying allies? It may startle Abrams to learn that the diplomatic process has always been treated as news. Any of the cables now in the news would have made a splash had they been leaked in the conventional, non-WikiLeaks fashion.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Wikileaks. The organization clearly has some serious issues and there are lots of reasonable questions concerning Julian Assange's leadership and focus. But it's really quite amazing how frequently the major media sources out there are attacking Wikileaks based on flat out false statements.

Filed Under: fact checking, floyd abrams, pentagon papers, whistleblowing, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Who's Who Of Clueless Music Industry Lobbyists Send Angry Letter To Wrong Publisher

from the nice-work-guys dept

Sometimes it just feels like the legacy music industry folks spend their time trying to make it easy for us to call them on their bizarre positions. The latest is a pretty laughable angry letter from a who's who of the organizations, who represent the past of the music industry. Signers to the letter include (among others) the heads of the RIAA, ASCAP, SoundExchange, BMI, SESAC, NMPA, AFTRA, Harry Fox and the Songwriter's Guild. The target of their scorn? Well, officially, it's the CEO of Ziff Davis, publisher of PC Mag, for publishing two articles in the wake of the shutdown of Limewire telling people about "alternatives" to Limewire. The problem? Well, beyond being totally pointless, PC Mag only published one of the articles (the one the letter seems to find less objectionable). The other article that they complained about was published by a totally different publication. Accuracy is not big with the old school music industry, it seems.

Yes, PC Mag published an article highlighting alternatives to LimeWire, just like a ton of other websites did. Anyone who was looking for an alternative to LimeWire didn't need PCMag to find them. In fact, many reports noted a noticeable increase of downloads of those alternatives pretty quickly after LimeWire went down. The lobbyists get pretty worked up about all this, though:

Let's be honest. The vast majority of LimeWire's users were interested in one thing and one thing only: downloading our music for free with the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal. The harm done to the creative community when people are encouraged to steal our music is immeasurable. Disclaimer or no, when you offer a list of alternative P2P sites to LimeWire -- and include more of the serial offenders -- PC Magazine is slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs -- including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together. Even worse is offering a direct link to a "resurrected" Limewire as follows: "I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly. In the event that you, yourself, would like to do some research, you can download the client here (direct link)."

Yes, they're quite upset about that article about the LimeWire Pirate Edition (which we wrote about as well). Only problem? PCMag didn't publish it. Nor did any other Ziff Davis publications. It was actually in PC World, which is published by IDG -- a totally different company than Ziff Davis. Now, it's not hard to confuse PCMag and PC World -- lots of people do. But when sending an angry letter condemning a publisher, you would think that maybe one of these super powerful industry lobbyist/mouthpieces would think to actually check the sources before mouthing off.

Apparently not.

Given this mistake, it should come as little surprise that the rest of the letter is also full of factually ridiculous claims, such as "job loss" numbers due to "piracy" -- numbers that have been widely debunked so many times that it's almost pathological that these groups still cling to them like some talisman. Also, it's kind of funny that they imply the publishing business would feel differently if it had also been decimated by free competition (they call it "piracy," but they mean free competition). Ziff Davis is, in fact, a shell of its former self due to exactly that situation. However, the company has been trying hard to resurrect itself by actually competing in the marketplace -- something the signers of this letter could learn from.

Of course, I'm sort of curious what these groups actually think they're accomplishing with a letter like this. If it's to pressure magazines like PC Mag (or, ahem, PC World) not to publish such stories, that won't stop the info from getting out there. It will only increase the irrelevance of those publications -- especially if they feel brow-beaten by a bunch of dinosaurs, who refuse to adapt no matter how many times it's been shown to them how they can embrace the future successfully. This really feels like the sort of letter that these guys signed onto so they can show their constituency that they're "doing something" by stomping their feet, rather than actually doing something helpful like helping those they represent to adapt and embrace new opportunities. The full amusing letter is included after the jump...

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, lobbyists, music industry, pc mag, pc world, publishing
Companies: ascap, bmi, idg, nmpa, riaa, sesac, sga, soundexchange, ziff davis

The Day The WSJ Attributed My Quote To Someone Else

from the corrections... dept

Late Sunday night, I got an email from L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, saying that he had an apology he wished to offer, as he had misattributed a quote of mine in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece about Europe's attempt to create a "right to forget." He took a quote from my Techdirt blog post on the subject from earlier this month, but accidentally attributed it to Adam Thierer of the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF). The writeup was doubly incorrect, as not only was the quote not Thierer's but PFF shut down at the end of September. You can see a screenshot here (since the actual article is behind the WSJ's infamous paywall): You can see a larger image that shows the quote in context if you'd like. Now, let me be clear: I don't think this is that big of a deal, and I told Crovitz exactly that in an email response (I also told that to Thierer, who had emailed me separately to make me aware of this and to note that he had not "plagiarized" from me). Mistakes happen. We all make them at times -- and I probably make more of them than others.

What interested me, however, is how the WSJ would respond. Crovitz told me that the paper version had already gone out, but that he had asked the Journal to fix the web version. So I watched during the course of the day to see if it happened. As of me writing this, it still attributes the quote to Thierer. Around noon on Monday, I had some fun and tweeted that the WSJ had quoted me, but attributed my quote to someone else. Following that tweet, Priya Ganapati, an editor at the WSJ tweeted back asking which story. I pointed it out, but didn't hear anything back. As I said, as of this posting, the story still has not been updated.

Again, this really is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. The quote was nothing special. I've been quoted in the WSJ before and perhaps I'll be quoted in the future (well, perhaps not after this post!). Three things, however, struck me as interesting about this: (1) how much time it appears to take to get the WSJ to correct such things and (2) how people likely would have reacted if this had gone in the opposite direction and (3) why "links" are a good thing.

Imagine if I had misquoted a story in the WSJ on Techdirt. Within minutes, I can assure you, our comments would be full of people pointing it out (and probably accusing me of purposely misleading people). And, hopefully, soon after that, I would have corrected the mistake and apologized for it. And, that's what I consider to be a good thing: as I said, I make mistakes. Plenty of them. But the community here makes for pretty damn good fact checkers, and they work hard at keeping me honest. It's something I appreciate. One commenter, Ryan Radia, did mention the mistake in his own comment on the WSJ article, but I believe it was after my tweet (Ryan follows me on Twitter). But there has been no response to that comment as of me writing this.

Finally, this highlights the value of links. While not possible in the paper version, it would have been quite easy for the Wall Street Journal to link to my blog post where I made that quote, which would have made it clear for anyone who clicked the link to see who actually wrote the story. Of course, that would require admitting that the quote had simply been pulled from a blog, and the article at least leaves the impression that Crovitz spoke with Thierer to get the quote.

Now, of course, the WSJ is a big newspaper with lots of busy people doing things more important than getting a misattributed quote fixed. But in an era when we keep hearing how important the big legacy press is, and how bloggers have some sort of "lower standards" when it comes to their own efforts, it strikes me that this is an example of where that's simply not true. We both might have made that mistake, but it's likely that I would have first linked to the source material in question and would likely (I hope!) have been faster to correct it. This isn't to say that blogs are "better," but to challenge the idea that the big newspapers automatically have higher standards on these sorts of things.

Filed Under: adam thierer, corrections, fact checking, gordon crovitz, journalism, misquote
Companies: wall street journal

Bank Robber Outs Himself After He Fact Checks Local News Reports On His Crimes

from the times-not-to-fact-check dept

You know what they always say: when there's a news article written about you, the facts are always wrong. Of course, in most cases, that's bad, and the fact checking you try to do afterwards is a bit useless. However, in some cases, you would think it would be good. Such as if you were a bank robber, and they had the description about you all wrong. Unfortunately, vanity sometimes gets the better of some people, and apparently a bank robber in Germany contacted the press and the police to correct the "errors" in their reporting on the crime, noting that they got "his age, height, mode of escape and accent wrong." Of course, emailing that info made it easy to track him down, and a few hours later he was in custody. Perhaps that's the trick in capturing overly vain bank robbers. Just get them to do their own fact checking by inserting errors into the police reports...

Filed Under: crime, criminal, fact checking

Journalism Professor Adds Wiki Sensibility To Crowdsourced Fact Checking: WikiFactCheck

from the that-seems-useful dept

We've talked about the public's desire for more real fact checking, as opposed to he-said/she-said style news reporting. And we've mentioned various programs that have brought crowdsourcing into the fact-checking game. And, now a USC journalism professor has put this all together to create a fact-checking wiki-based site, appropriately called WikiFactCheck.

Digging down to facts tends to be what crowdsourcing is good at. The problem, of course, is that there often are some blurry lines around what is actually a "fact" and what is not. But, given the (some would say excessive) cultural focus at Wikipedia on forcing a "neutral point of view," I could see how a similar group of people could somewhat vehemently focus in on specific facts that can be proven true or false, rather than getting too bogged down in opinion vs. facts debates.

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, news, wikis
Companies: wikifactcheck

Crowdsourced Fact Checking

from the seems-like-a-good-idea dept

We've pointed out in the past that people seem to really like it when the press actually fact checks, rather than simply acts as a stenographer to record what everyone has to say about an issue. But, of course, fact checking is time consuming and difficult work -- and, in the end, no professional fact checker is ever going to be able to fact check anything as effectively as a wider group of knowledgeable people. It's one of the reasons why we've always considered this site to be a discussion and community site, rather than a "journalism" site. We post our opinions based on what information is out there, and we fully expect an engaged audience to discuss things in the comments, adding additional details, or flat out correcting factual errors in the initial reports we relied on. It's part of the overall process.

And, now it looks like some news organizations are looking to test out a more formalized version of this. The Poynter Institute and FactCheck.org are testing out a new system that crowdsources fact checking via its new Truthsquad effort. The idea is pretty much what you'd expect. The idea is to tap into the wider wisdom of the crowd to see if they can help break down various claims from politicians to see whether or not they're truthful or not. This isn't a total free-for-all, of course. It's simply asking the community for input and evidence.

Filed Under: crowdsourced, fact checking, journalism
Companies: poynter

Scary: It's 'Newsworthy' That A Newspaper Prints Facts

from the what-has-the-world-become dept

It's really incredible how much "he said/she said" reporting is out there these days, where some (certainly not all) reporters seem to think it's their job to "report both sides of the story." Of course, there are all sorts of problems with that: a story may have a lot more than two sides (or perhaps one fewer). And, some of those sides might not be telling the truth. But some (again, not all) reporters act as though as long as they report what the different sides are saying, they have no obligation to point out when any of the parties are being less than truthful. At times, it gets even worse, when reporters just report one side of a story... and that one side isn't even close to truthful.

The problem is that some have decided that "objective" reporting means not actually pointing out false statements. Unfortunately for those who believe that, it seems pretty clear that people like it when reporters actually call people on blatantly false statements, as they find that very useful. But it's still a pretty sad day when the fact that a newspaper has started fact-checking what politicians say is considered newsworthy. It shows just how far some newspapers have sunk. Equally amusing, of course, is the claim from one politician that such fact-checking represents "a new low," and that kind of thing belongs "on the editorial page." Calling someone out on a blatantly false statement is not editorial and doesn't belong just on the opinion pages. People look to news organizations to report the news, and that means highlighting the truth and calling out lies. Just because you point out that someone is not being truthful, it doesn't make it opinion or bias. It makes it useful.

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism

If You're Going To Dump On 'Citizen Journalism' Projects... It Probably Helps Not To Get All Your Facts Wrong

from the just-saying dept

This one comes via Jay Rosen, who points us to an article at NowToronto.com that trashes a new Toronto-based journalism project called OpenFile, for being a "citizen journalism" project. The main complaint seems to be that so-called "citizen journalism" companies haven't done well, and thus, this new one won't do well either. It also complains that "the tone" is "all over the place" because it doesn't have an institutional voice. That point struck me as odd, because any news publication that has many opinion writers and columnists often has a tone that is "all over the place" due to the conflicting views of those opinion writers. Just look at the NY Times and its varied op-ed writers.

But what made the story more amusing is the note in the comments that the guy trashing this "citizen journalism" project got pretty much all of the facts wrong, including the idea that it's a "citizen journalism" project. As the comment noted:

We don't do citizen journalism, and people don't vote on the pitches. Maybe you want to consider linking to this comment in the piece, or offering a correction.

Your points about the challenges faced by sites like NowPublic etc. are valid, but in all honesty they don't apply. It's incorrect to say we're practicing citizen journalism in light of the fact that we actually hire professional journalists to follow up on pitches submitted by the public. That's one of the distinguishing characteristics of our model.

When you ask whose perspective is offered in the piece about Sonny Yeung, it's perfectly clear that it's the perspective of the author of the piece, who also happens to be working at the Toronto Star for the summer. It wasn't written by a citizen journalist. It has professional byline just like the above post does.

We take suggestions from the public and encourage them to be part of the reporting process, but the work is done by professionals

It would seem that, if you're working for an established publication, and want to dump on "citizen journalism" for not being of particularly high quality, it would behoove you to make sure that your own article on the subject is at least close to accurate.

Filed Under: citizen journalism, fact checking

Turns Out People Really Like It When The Press Fact Checks, Rather Than Just Reporting What Everyone Said

from the duh dept

This really shouldn't surprise anyone, but hopefully this means that more folks in the press will realize a simple point: their job isn't just to report on what both sides said, but to say directly when someone is lying or being misleading. The AP, which has had some issues in this department in the past, has started aggressively fact checking politicians and now claims that those fact check pieces are the most popular pieces they do. They're the most clicked and the most linked to stories. This is good news. One of the major frustrations with the press is how they seem to just reprint press releases and talking points, rather than challenging questionable claims. If they start to realize that people really do look to the press to tell them who's being truthful, perhaps some of these publications wouldn't be struggling quite so much.

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, news