ZDNet retracts story: one unverified source, key player not called October 10, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSome basic errors in our reporting, admits Larry Dignan, editor in chief of ZDNet:
"Overnight one of our bloggers, Richard Koman, reported that Yahoo handed over user names to the Iranian government. We’re retracting the blog post. Here’s what went wrong.
First, the post was based on a single source who had a clear agenda. That source wasn’t properly filtered and his charges weren’t verifiable by credible sources.
Second, we never called Yahoo to verify the report or get an appropriate response. Blog networks still need to follow journalism 101 and Yahoo should have been called. In summary, our checks and balances went awry. We put a lot of trust in our bloggers to get it right and frankly we let you down with this report.
The chain of events can be found on the post, but we wanted to do a separate item for the record. My apologies again and we will be taking corrective measures to prevent this breakdown."
FT editor Lionel Barber: Why journalism wins my vote October 11, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"…the mainstream press lost touch with its audience at the very moment when technology, via the internet, was dramatically lowering the barriers to entry.[…]
…a shift in the balance of power towards new media, with wholesale repercussions for the practice of journalism.[…]
…whether this same journalistic rigour can survive the current maelstrom.
… the role of the trained journalist as trusted intermediary no longer holds. Some may argue that this privileged status was always precarious, even a fiction. […]
Yet to abandon the quest to write the first draft of history carries risks. There will always be powerful forces seeking to suppress injustice or inconvenient truths. For all their failings, newspapers, especially the well-financed family-owned newspapers, have served as a counterweight. On both sides of the Atlantic, the line between news reporting and comment is becoming increasingly blurred. That is something that should give everyone in the profession pause for thought."
Nick Robinson: ‘I got too close to government in reporting Iraq’ October 9, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, News, blogging, journalism education, reporting , 1 comment so farThe BBC’s political editor regrets:
The biggest self-criticism I have was [that] I got too close to government in the reporting of the Iraq war. I didn’t do enough to go away and say ‘well hold on, what about the other side?’ It is the one moment in my recent career where I have thought I didn’t push hard enough, I didn’t question enough and I should have been more careful.
Robinson offered this candid self-assessment in a debate on political campaigners and reporters at City University last night — as reported by one of my journalism students, Michael Haddon, for journalism.co.uk, and on his own blog. Michael also wrote about Iain Dale’s comments on political reporting (and on his blog).
As for the government line on weapons of mass destruction, Robinson said:
I don’t think the government did set out to lie about weapons of mass destruction. I do think they systematically and cumulatively misled people.
What’s the distinction? It was clear to me that Alastair Campbell knew how what he was saying was being reported, knew that that was a long way from the truth, and was content for it so to be. They knew it was wrong, they wanted it to be wrong – they haven’t actually lied.
Footnote to Michael and someone at Journalism.co.uk: check spelling — it’s Alastair not Alistair (corrected in quote above). Bring back the subs!