Suitably Flip

Recovering Fabulist Off the Wagon?

[Scroll for updates on breaking irregularities!]

Throughout the week, I've been posting about the anti-blogosphere sentiments bubbling at Editor & Publisher.  Today, the excitement boils over.

To recap:

Monday:  E&P Publishes a piece about the inaccuracy and unreliability of blogs (riddled with spelling errors).
Tuesday:  E&P editor Greg Mitchell writes Part 1 of an article lambasting bloggers' successful efforts to debunk several instances of war fauxotgraphy as "speculative, unfounded, or politically-driven charges."
Thursday:  Part 2 of Mitchell's diatribe hits the E&P website, in which he laments the "anti-media propaganda war" prosecuted by bloggers.
Friday:  Confederate Yankee notes a 3-year-old article penned by Mitchell, detailing his own "Jayson Blair" moment, in which he invented a source, forged notes, and wrote a fake story while on assignment for the Niagara Falls Gazette in 1967.

Today, Confederate Yankee notes that Mitchell's 2003 confession has been doctored.  Not in 1967, in the last 24 hours.

The opening paragraph of yesterday's version:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

And today (changes emphasized):

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

For comparison, Ed Driscoll points out that the undoctored version of the article is still available via the Wayback Machine.

The facts of the story have not changed.  In a later paragraph in the undoctored article, Mitchell's age was given as 19 and a web search bears out the timing (Update:  As noted below, further web research actually debunks the timing).  But this version, in which the aging of the transgression is identified upfront, is clearly not from May 20, 2003, as the article continues to claim.  It's either from August 25 or 26, 2006.

Shall we play Count the Ironies?

1.  "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" publishes an article extolling traditional media's relative accuracy versus the blogosphere, committing multiple errors that any spell checker would have caught.

2.  The journal's editor lashes out at bloggers for accurately exposing repeated fraud among various traditional media sources, citing them for waging a "propaganda war".

3.  The editor in question - albeit at a young age - committed a wholly deliberate act of unabashed journalistic fraud.

4.  Once the irony-drenched atonement gains a heap of blog-based attention, someone at the journal in question doctors the story retroactively, which serves to mitigate the seriousness of the transgression.

Reprinted (unedited from the original) by popular demand just because I think it's funny, try your hand at the E&P SAT Analogy Challenge:

Greg Mitchell:Bloggers::

A)  Old Man Jenkins:Those meddling kids
B)  Mr. Furley:Jack and the girls
C)  Nixon:Hippies

Turn your monitor upside down to reveal the answer.

There's no way to say this without sounding condescending, so I'll just say it:  Doesn't the mainstream media ever learn?  We've entered a place where this kind of shiftiness doesn't go unnoticed.  Except for the spelling errors in the comparative accuracy piece, I can't claim to have uncovered any of these tidbits myself (I know, a smidge nerdy) - a handful of other bloggers and commenters are to thank for that capable sleuthing.  But one way or another, if your reporting falls somewhere in the spectrum from simply sloppy to politically driven to deliberately fraudulent, you're going to get called out on it.

If Mitchell and E&P are bitter about their eroding influence and resentful of the blogosphere for helping effect it, they're giving credit where it isn't due.  There's every reason to believe grievous errors and intentional distortions have always plagued mainstream journalism.  An efficient mechanism capable of exposing those flaws has emerged, but it's a misplacement of blame to lash out at that mechanism.  Any standard-bearer for the mainstream media, if it believes in the value and integrity of the service it provides, ought to embrace this new wheat-chaff separating machine as an opportunity to weed out hacks and emerge as a more robust, more trustworthy source of objective news reporting.

Rather, the very level of rancor exhibited by some media outlets in response to blog-based exposure of repeated, deliberate fraud is telling in and of itself.

Update:  Courtesy of commenters in the CY post, it appears the Niagara Falls shutoff took place in 1969, not 1967.  It's possible they were also shut off in 1967, as Mitchell claims, but Wikipedia and Encarta reference only the 1969 shutoff.  Does this mean Mitchell was 21, not 19, at the time of his "Jayson Blair moment"?

If the 1969 shutoff was indeed the one Mitchell "covered", then either he was born in 1949/50, meaning he was indeed 19, and the story is wrong only about the year; or he was born in 1947/48, meaning he was 21, and the story misrepresents both the year of the transgression and his age.  Oddly, I can't find a source referencing the year Mitchell was born.  Still looking...

Update:  According to this article by David Hirschman, Mitchell was 55 in September 2003, meaning he was born in 1947/48.  If correct, and assuming there was no 1967 shutoff, one has to conclude Mitchell's 2003 mea culpa misrepresented both the year of the incident and his age at the time.

Given E&P's willingness to alter old articles, will they update the original story to reflect the actual timing?

Previously:

E&P Windbag a Recovering Fabulist
Windbag Reloaded
Hot Air Takes On MSM Windbag
Would I Lie To You?

Elsewhere:
Confederate Yankee, Mary Katherine Ham, Protein Wisdom, Little Green Footballs, Cold Fury, Hot Air, Patterico, Riehl World View, Ace of Spades, Michelle Malkin, Ali Bubba

Comments

Recovering Fabulist Off the Wagon?

[Scroll for updates on breaking irregularities!]

Throughout the week, I've been posting about the anti-blogosphere sentiments bubbling at Editor & Publisher.  Today, the excitement boils over.

To recap:

Monday:  E&P Publishes a piece about the inaccuracy and unreliability of blogs (riddled with spelling errors).
Tuesday:  E&P editor Greg Mitchell writes Part 1 of an article lambasting bloggers' successful efforts to debunk several instances of war fauxotgraphy as "speculative, unfounded, or politically-driven charges."
Thursday:  Part 2 of Mitchell's diatribe hits the E&P website, in which he laments the "anti-media propaganda war" prosecuted by bloggers.
Friday:  Confederate Yankee notes a 3-year-old article penned by Mitchell, detailing his own "Jayson Blair" moment, in which he invented a source, forged notes, and wrote a fake story while on assignment for the Niagara Falls Gazette in 1967.

Today, Confederate Yankee notes that Mitchell's 2003 confession has been doctored.  Not in 1967, in the last 24 hours.

The opening paragraph of yesterday's version:

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back when I worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette), our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

And today (changes emphasized):

Since the press seems to be in full-disclosure mode these days, I want to finally come clean. Back in 1967, when I was 19 and worked for the Niagara Falls (N.Y.) Gazette (now the Niagara Gazette) as a summer intern, our city editor asked me to find out what tourists thought about an amazing local event: Engineers had literally "turned off" the famous cataracts, diverting water so they could shore up the crumbling rock face. Were visitors disappointed to find a trickle rather than a roar? Or thrilled about witnessing this once-in-a-lifetime stunt?

For comparison, Ed Driscoll points out that the undoctored version of the article is still available via the Wayback Machine.

The facts of the story have not changed.  In a later paragraph in the undoctored article, Mitchell's age was given as 19 and a web search bears out the timing (Update:  As noted below, further web research actually debunks the timing).  But this version, in which the aging of the transgression is identified upfront, is clearly not from May 20, 2003, as the article continues to claim.  It's either from August 25 or 26, 2006.

Shall we play Count the Ironies?

1.  "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" publishes an article extolling traditional media's relative accuracy versus the blogosphere, committing multiple errors that any spell checker would have caught.

2.  The journal's editor lashes out at bloggers for accurately exposing repeated fraud among various traditional media sources, citing them for waging a "propaganda war".

3.  The editor in question - albeit at a young age - committed a wholly deliberate act of unabashed journalistic fraud.

4.  Once the irony-drenched atonement gains a heap of blog-based attention, someone at the journal in question doctors the story retroactively, which serves to mitigate the seriousness of the transgression.

Reprinted (unedited from the original) by popular demand just because I think it's funny, try your hand at the E&P SAT Analogy Challenge:

Greg Mitchell:Bloggers::

A)  Old Man Jenkins:Those meddling kids
B)  Mr. Furley:Jack and the girls
C)  Nixon:Hippies

Turn your monitor upside down to reveal the answer.

There's no way to say this without sounding condescending, so I'll just say it:  Doesn't the mainstream media ever learn?  We've entered a place where this kind of shiftiness doesn't go unnoticed.  Except for the spelling errors in the comparative accuracy piece, I can't claim to have uncovered any of these tidbits myself (I know, a smidge nerdy) - a handful of other bloggers and commenters are to thank for that capable sleuthing.  But one way or another, if your reporting falls somewhere in the spectrum from simply sloppy to politically driven to deliberately fraudulent, you're going to get called out on it.

If Mitchell and E&P are bitter about their eroding influence and resentful of the blogosphere for helping effect it, they're giving credit where it isn't due.  There's every reason to believe grievous errors and intentional distortions have always plagued mainstream journalism.  An efficient mechanism capable of exposing those flaws has emerged, but it's a misplacement of blame to lash out at that mechanism.  Any standard-bearer for the mainstream media, if it believes in the value and integrity of the service it provides, ought to embrace this new wheat-chaff separating machine as an opportunity to weed out hacks and emerge as a more robust, more trustworthy source of objective news reporting.

Rather, the very level of rancor exhibited by some media outlets in response to blog-based exposure of repeated, deliberate fraud is telling in and of itself.

Update:  Courtesy of commenters in the CY post, it appears the Niagara Falls shutoff took place in 1969, not 1967.  It's possible they were also shut off in 1967, as Mitchell claims, but Wikipedia and Encarta reference only the 1969 shutoff.  Does this mean Mitchell was 21, not 19, at the time of his "Jayson Blair moment"?

If the 1969 shutoff was indeed the one Mitchell "covered", then either he was born in 1949/50, meaning he was indeed 19, and the story is wrong only about the year; or he was born in 1947/48, meaning he was 21, and the story misrepresents both the year of the transgression and his age.  Oddly, I can't find a source referencing the year Mitchell was born.  Still looking...

Update:  According to this article by David Hirschman, Mitchell was 55 in September 2003, meaning he was born in 1947/48.  If correct, and assuming there was no 1967 shutoff, one has to conclude Mitchell's 2003 mea culpa misrepresented both the year of the incident and his age at the time.

Given E&P's willingness to alter old articles, will they update the original story to reflect the actual timing?

Previously:

E&P Windbag a Recovering Fabulist
Windbag Reloaded
Hot Air Takes On MSM Windbag
Would I Lie To You?

Elsewhere:
Confederate Yankee, Mary Katherine Ham, Protein Wisdom, Little Green Footballs, Cold Fury, Hot Air, Patterico, Riehl World View, Ace of Spades, Michelle Malkin, Ali Bubba