Sunday, October 12, 2008
Airbrushing the New York Times
The New York Times has bloggers, but they have not adopted blogging traditions or ethical practices. Consider "airbrushing," which is the removal or substantive editing of a post without disclosing the revisions in an update. Bloggers, who operate in a low-trust environment, believe that airbrushing damages their credibility. Reputable bloggers know it is better to own up to their errors, poor judgment, or bad writing than to undermine their own reputation by trying to erase the internet. Sadly, at least one "blogger" at the Times does not live by these rules, probably because real blogger-style transparency would reveal her to be a partisan hack.
10 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Oct 13, 12:48:00 AM:
So a few dozen bloggers in their pjs--you, Malkin, and some others-- decided to treat your blogs like stone tablets. Then you act like left-wing control freaks, expecting others to follow your "rules."
If you don't like what the NY Times does, you should put together a deal to buy the company. Don't ask me to invest. I don't like the paper. I also don't like this silly point you make from time to time.
Next thing I know, you'll want me to stop smoking Cuban cigars.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Oct 13, 01:21:00 AM:
P.S. Good post by NewsBusters.
By somercet, at
Mon Oct 13, 03:56:00 AM:
DEC: Release 2nd and 3rd editions of a book, and you have not destroyed the copies already out there. Revise a blogpost, and you have. Revision control and disclosure should be a must in the electron age.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Oct 13, 04:35:00 AM:
Pbuxton,
In the great days of Damon Runyon and Walter Winchell, New York newspapers published seven editions a day without writing "update," "update," "update" on stories. Most people saw only one edition a day, and the public libraries saved only one edition a day.
But that's unimportant. The point is this: "Your blog. Do what you want. Republicans are supposed to believe in freedom."
Many well-known bloggers--yes, on the political right--delete and change posts from time to time. I've seen them do it. (I won't mention names.) I still read and respect the opinions of those bloggers.
Re: "Revision control and disclosure should be a must in the electron age."
This isn't accounting. You don't need an audit trail. The only people who would care wouldn't have your best interests at heart.
TH's point about credibility is based on assumptions of his blogging clique. If something is wrong, I want to see it removed. There is too much bad info on the Web now. I don't have time to sort through a bunch of crap to get to the bottom line.
By 
, at
Mon Oct 13, 04:49:00 AM:
If you don't like what the NY Times does, you should put together a deal to buy the company.
Or we can exercise our constitutional right to free speech and respond to them. It doesn't really matter whether or not that's okay with you.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Oct 13, 05:03:00 AM:
Go ahead, Jim. I'm the one who advocated freedom here.
What's the big news? That the NY Times is biased? Of course it's biased. It's been that way since I started reading it in 1960. Author Gay Talese wrote about the paper's arrogance in his 1969 bestseller "The Kingdom and the Power." The paper's arrogance has grown worse over the years.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Oct 13, 05:44:00 AM:
Well, DEC, everything you say is true (as usual). However, blogging norms are now sufficiently widespread on both left and right that after seven or eight years political bloggers have set expectations -- not rules, but expectations -- of behavior. Are those expectations breached with some regularity? Of course. But in the main the bloggers who have built reputations follow certain rules, and one of them is being transparent about substantive revisions, at least after they have been called on their error. That does not mean leaving bad information on the internet, but it does mean noting revisions in updates and so forth. Now, the NYT's bloggers can ignore these norms, but they do so at new cost to their already tattered credibility. Point is, they are trying to merge the power of their brand name -- a "high-trust" environment concept -- with the hipnitude of blogging without adopting the very different norms of the latter. Unwise.
By , at
Mon Oct 13, 09:07:00 AM:
Go ahead, Jim. I'm the one who advocated freedom here.
Odd way of showing it, but okay.
What's the big news? That the NY Times is biased? Of course it's biased.
So we shouldn't criticize it? Well, that's one theory among many, I suppose.
I'd think the "news" would be correcting facts the Times gets wrong, and in this case, pointing out when a Times blogger sneakily tries to make it look like she didn't get those facts wrong. Seems like a worthwhile enterprise to me, but you're the expert.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Mon Oct 13, 10:07:00 AM:
You're debating yourself, Jim.
By Escort81, at
Mon Oct 13, 06:37:00 PM:
I think there's a sex joke in there somewhere, DEC!
There is an element of a love/hate relationship conservative bloggers have with the NYT. They want something to be the "Paper of Record," if for no other reason than the future study of history may rely partly on that. But it has fallen so far from the standards of even a generation ago that it is little more than a daily version of a magazine for Manhattanites. It is particulalry frustrating when the Times decides to run a story with very little news value that compromises our national security goals, as it did in revealing certain counterterrorism operations that Treasury undertook a few years ago.
To TH's point about blogging norms, is there actually a site where such agreed upon norms are recorded for all to see? That might actually help, sort of like a what a verisafe does for transaction oriented websites. In old-school journalism, there is such a thing (it is actually still taught in newsrooms and in J School) -- for example, Mary Mapes' ex post claim that nobody ever proved conclusively that the TANG documents were forgeries might be true (!), but that is not the journalistic standard one uses to run the story; it was up to her to know that they were genuine beyond all reasonable doubt, which, er, didn't happen.
