Friday, August 17, 2007
Agence-France Press needs "internal controls"
The deception and outright theft at the wire services is so bad one is forced to wonder how much of it was going on before bloggers were around to uncover it. Read these two posts at Confederate Yankee, and then explain why AFP apparently cares so little for its brand name that it is unwilling to impose internal controls to prevent this sort of thing.
It is all good sport, of course, to pick on the mainstream media, but my question about internal controls is serious. If a non-media corporation commits an error that appears to involve self-interest, the media corporations rise in a high dudgeon about the need for "internal controls" to prevent that sort of thing, regardless of the cost of those controls or their impact on the substantive business of the non-media corporation. The media corporations often back their criticism of of non-media corporations with editorials calling for increased regulation.
Well, if strong internal controls -- meaning, among other things, complex approval procedures for products that go to customers and aggressive internal auditing of compliance with those procedures -- are appropriate for non-media corporations, why are they not also suitable for media corporations? How hard would it be to write detailed "SOPs" for the publication of photographs and other material and audit compliance with those SOPs?
And, by the way, do not forget to criminalize non-compliance.
Please, do tell.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
4 Comments:
By 
antithaca, at
Fri Aug 17, 11:42:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By antithaca, at
Fri Aug 17, 11:42:00 AM:
I read AFP's wire stories daily. Until recently, they seemed a cut above Reuters and AP. Now, I have to force myself to keep thinking that.
It's sad really.
By 
, at
Fri Aug 17, 05:17:00 PM:
The real danger with blatant errors in media coverage will be demands for legislation. As much as I detest MSM coverage I would really loathe attempts at controlling the coverage through the government.
By TigerHawk, at
Fri Aug 17, 05:31:00 PM:
Sophist, I also would appose any attempt by government to regulate the press, and am not proposing such. However, I would say that the MSM relies on the fact that so many of its critics would ultimately object to regulation (even if it were permissible, which it should not be) to avoid putting in real quality systems of the sort that other industries have to continuously reduce defects. Point is, there is no obvious reason why quality systems could not be brought to journalism, other than that nobody is yelling loudly enough for journalists to implement them.
