The story is far from over (we still have not seen what, if any corporate fallout there will be) in the case of Newsweek’s Koran story that wasn’t — and Glenn Reynolds, aka InstaPundit, asks if this latest journalism scandal might be the media’s “tipping point.”
Read his whole Tech Central Station column but here are some key excerpts:
The blogs have certainly been all over this story, with the tagline “Newsweek lied, people died.” And while that tagline may be a trifle unfair, there’s no question that Newsweek took it seriously, and that Newsweek’s retraction happened a lot faster than it would have a few years ago.
A good point. Also, the word “lied” when people use it to refer to Newsweek: that implies editors and reporters sit in rooms rubbing their hands in evil delight trying to find ways to state mistruths and go after the President (when the reporter on this story became a journalistic made-man by going after Democrat Bill Clinton). The word “lies” is totally inaccurate as well as what Reynolds accurately calls it, unfair.
Using the word “lied” in this case doesn’t enhance the credibility of those who use it. That charge is as impossible to confirm as Newsweeks’ poorly confirmed report.
In fact, what we’ve seen here is journalistic negligence with huge consequences — and it doesn’t matter if the allegation has appeared in print elsewhere, as some Newsweek defenders and journalists are saying (the rioters were apparently responding to a specific allegation in Newsweek based on what the magazine was passing off as solid information versus rumor or past press reports). Newsweek had A DUTY to confirm for ITS report the veracity of the information being passed along to its readers as accurate. This is NOT a Republican or Democrat issue — although some would clearly like to turn it into that.
More from Reynolds, who has a long warning-to-the-media quote from David Gergen:
So it seems that the Goliaths have learned to respect the “army of Davids” ….That’s probably a good sign.
Some people have likened the Big Media (or “legacy media” as they’re sometimes called) to dinosaurs. But Newsweek’s rapid response suggests that they’re capable of learning and adapting, at least in terms of their response to journalistic screwups. The bigger question, of course, will be whether they’re capable of changing not just their response to reporting gone bad, but their style of reporting.
Let’s hope so. Tipping points come in a variety of forms. In some of them, the tippees survive and flourish. In others they become extinct. This still has a chance to be one of the former, rather than one of the latter — but with even David Gergen chiming in, there seems little room for doubt that the tipping point is upon us. Editors and publishers take heed.
Basically, the style of reporting requires no big revolutionary changes.
Editors and reporters just need to follow the basic rules taught by journalism profs about the need for solid confirmation — rules taught for decades, observed for decades…but increasingly IGNORED by some in the media at their own peril.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.