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a "news" refresher course
Jul. 29th, 2010 12:53 pmNEWS 101 - How to Reliably Source a News Article
As a media consumer, you might be tempted to believe anything you see printed on paper or on a website that is backed by someone who can obviously pay the monthly ISP bill. This is a common mistake, but all it takes is a moment or two to verify what you read.
Case in point: I get on Yahoo this morning and one of the lead items is how Orlando Bloom and his new wife are expecting a baby. So I click on the story, which gives me a link to the US Weekly website with the story. Okay, this is good - Yahoo has enough sense to direct me to the source of THEIR headline so I can see for myself.
However, the problem is still that the Yahoo headline reads as though this event is a fait accompli. If you read the actual item on US, it quotes "a source" as the sole informant for this information. No name, no better hint as to the relationship of this person to the people being written about. Now this is fine for the Washington Post when they have to keep their informant's identity quiet so the person isn't snatched off the street and fitted with concrete shoes for the East River for providing sensitive government documents to the reporter. US Weekly is to the Post what a Chicken McNugget is to a Ruth's Chris filet mignon - so not only is the source of the information cloudy, the source of the article is a questionable tabloid, too.
The lesson? It's not that Veronica cares if the happy couple is expecting - she could be carrying triplets for all I mind. This is a thing for me only in the professional sense of consumption of media. If you see this story in the Entertainment section of a reliable publication, it's likely been checked out and is true (I waited until their wedding notice went up on Reuters before believing it, for example.) If it's in a not-so-reliable publication and there's a named person who says she's pregnant? Good chance it might still be true - at least you can be forgiven for actually thinking it is. But this kind of "article" is like me writing on here that I heard from another unnamed LJ user that Ralph on my f-list gives blowjobs for five bucks in an undetermined location. /shrug
As a media consumer, you might be tempted to believe anything you see printed on paper or on a website that is backed by someone who can obviously pay the monthly ISP bill. This is a common mistake, but all it takes is a moment or two to verify what you read.
Case in point: I get on Yahoo this morning and one of the lead items is how Orlando Bloom and his new wife are expecting a baby. So I click on the story, which gives me a link to the US Weekly website with the story. Okay, this is good - Yahoo has enough sense to direct me to the source of THEIR headline so I can see for myself.
However, the problem is still that the Yahoo headline reads as though this event is a fait accompli. If you read the actual item on US, it quotes "a source" as the sole informant for this information. No name, no better hint as to the relationship of this person to the people being written about. Now this is fine for the Washington Post when they have to keep their informant's identity quiet so the person isn't snatched off the street and fitted with concrete shoes for the East River for providing sensitive government documents to the reporter. US Weekly is to the Post what a Chicken McNugget is to a Ruth's Chris filet mignon - so not only is the source of the information cloudy, the source of the article is a questionable tabloid, too.
The lesson? It's not that Veronica cares if the happy couple is expecting - she could be carrying triplets for all I mind. This is a thing for me only in the professional sense of consumption of media. If you see this story in the Entertainment section of a reliable publication, it's likely been checked out and is true (I waited until their wedding notice went up on Reuters before believing it, for example.) If it's in a not-so-reliable publication and there's a named person who says she's pregnant? Good chance it might still be true - at least you can be forgiven for actually thinking it is. But this kind of "article" is like me writing on here that I heard from another unnamed LJ user that Ralph on my f-list gives blowjobs for five bucks in an undetermined location. /shrug
