In response to David’s request for suggestions about what remedial steps the Greater Boston producers should take on their upcoming Penance Program, here is what I would do if I were them:
1. Ask John Carroll to take a leave of absence. I am sure he is a careful and excellent reporter most of the time, but his recent performance was inexcusable. He probably is overworked and simply did not have the time to do the story properly. I would give him six unpaid months, or however much longer he said he needed to get himself organized, then bring him back on probation with a colleague to fact-check his stories for the next year.
2. Issue a public apology. Not simply a correction of facts, but an actual apology for broadcasting a completely fabricated story and then making incredibly broad generalizations based on untruths. They have done a tremendous disservice to their viewers and, since we all pay for this station, the whole community — not to mention the reputation of WGBH and the PBS.
3. Include David in the discussion part of the show. They could probably have a very constructive discussion. It is tragically apparent that the panelists have fallen badly behind the times with respect to the way political opinions are formed these days. Their reluctance to include him in the discussion suggests that they are scared that their ignorance will be exposed in the face of someone who really does know what he is talking about so far as local blogs are concerned, and that they recognize their performance last week was indefensible and don’t want to be confronted with that harsh reality.
Incidentally, I applaud David for agreeing to appear in another taped segment for Greater Boston. I advised him to have nothing further to do with the show until after they demonstrated that they recognize they did something wrong and are willing to take significant practical measures to ensure it does not happen again.
As others have said, the credibility of the Greater Boston program and, in my opinion, to some degree WGBH as a whole as a news source is on the line. They just broadcast an entire piece, and had an extensive discussion, on the equivalent of a satirical article in The Onion for heaven’s sake. They have been subjected to national ridicule and dragged the good name of WGBH through the mud before, without exaggeration, hundreds of thousands of blog readers — who have responded with a deluge of posts on websites acorss the nation. They need to respond effectively. “Stay the course,” here as elsewhere, is not a credible strategy.
UPDATE. Some commentary on this general subject worth reading at Dan Kennedy’s blog here, and at Greater Boston’s blog here.
Because if it isn’t, the self-righteousness and self-importance of this post is beyond belief.
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Maybe wehould have BMG appreciation day.
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Stand your ground John Carroll.
Great idea, Ernie. What date do you suggest?
let me think. But it has to make $$$$.
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So a parade would be nice. With people throwing money at at float carrying you, Charley and David. Ryan can drive. Lynne can decorate it.
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With a grassroot effort and good planning you can get thousands of nutjobs lining Columbus Ave and throwing double sawbucks at you.
Who is it posting as EBIII? After all this time, maybe you should come out of the shadows and take responsibility for your commentary, if you want people to take you seriously. Otherwise, as everyone has repeated ad nauseum, anonymous commentators should be considered primarily entertainment, which you provide in bushels EBIII.
Maybe “as Bob as repeated ad nauseum”
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You’re the one who bangs that drum loudest and most often, Bob, not “everyone”.
As I have repeated ad nauseum. Not everyone agrees with me.
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As to the celebration on Commonwealth Avenue suggested by Ernie, maybe we should have a gnomish fellow on the float with us whispering “Remember, you are mortal,” in our ears. That is what the Roman emperors supposedly did for their triumphs. And I take it the tone of my posting struck you as sufficiently imperial đŸ˜‰
I said Columbus Ave. Big differnce. South End on a Sunday Morning.
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Damn Bob, How are we gonna make some schekles
yet another screw up. Than again, I acknowledge my fallability.
You either like what I write or you don’t.
I could not care less if people take me seriously. I know you guys do want people to take you seriously. This latest bru ha ha is making that difficult for many.
I assume Bob hasn’t allowed a factual error to find its way into one of his posts in the last six months, because if he had, he’d now still be in serving his six-month penance.
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I really don’t understand BMG’s defensiveness on this issue. BMG accepts ads, and no one sees any problem with that. But if a candidate walked into an interview, asked for an endorsement and handed them each an envelope, they would presumably be outraged and show the pol the door. No one’s criticizing them, so why are they defending pundits-for-hire?
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The vaunted “self-policing” in the blogosphere is harder to credit when respected leaders in the blog community circle the wagons at the first sign of criticism in the MSM.
If I were getting paid by WGBH and I ran a completely idiotic and unprofessional piece like the one by Carroll I definitely would want to reassess what I was doing. I hope I also would have the guts to take responsibility for my mistake and apologize to our readers. Of course, we all mistakes. Me personally, I believe, more than many. Probably far more than Carroll. And don’t forget just plain faulty reasoning: that too. But that doesn’t mean he should get a pass.
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As to your broader point, I think, with respect, you may have missed the basic point. The argument is not about pundits-for-hire. No one here, I don’t think, has much of a problem with that. The argument is about (a) disclosure, and (b) the hypocrisy of journalists who claim to be impartial but in fact are themselves heavily, if not always directly, influenced by a variety of sponsors. There is also, in the wake of Carroll’s comical mistake in combination with an enormously self-righteous and obviously very ill-informed panel, an element of accountability. Specifically, it is an interesting question about exactly what they should do tomorrow. I’ve said what I think. You are welcome to make your own suggestion.
GB’s suppose to be a forum for “professional” journalists.
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Who are obviously more experienced at, say, FACT CHECKING, before they go public with a story.
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Unlike those horrible, uninformed amateurs who write on them nasty, nasty blogs.
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[deep sigh]
Lets not throw out the baby with the bathwater. WGBH also produces “Frontline”, right? Frontline is IMHO the best investigative journalism out there.
Why thank you.
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Nothing like self-indulgence.
Frontline in particular. Nova too, just for starters. And highly reliable. How do you think they would respond if they found they had produced and broadcast an entire episode condemning the brutal dictatorial ruler of Burma for killing thousands in a desperate bid to win Time’s Man of the Year dedication — only to discover that the fundamental premise was a laughable hoax immediately apparent as fiction to anyone with either (a) an ounce of common sense, or (b) the ability to do a Google search? Because that is what Greater Boston did. Again, we all make mistakes. The test is in how one responds.
I wish I could write like Dan kennedy
I think I am asking for real accountability. In any event, I left some comments on his blog, which he has set so that he personally approves them before they publish.
I hope you guys are taking a good look at what is happening here. Your work and effort to get some notice and credibility could go poof. Are you at the peak of your 15 minutes? Have you gone out of your way here to shoot yourself in the foot? (which people usually survive) Or will you move on up and shoot yourself in the face? (Or testicles, you would survive, but why would you want to?)
Ernie you are always good for a belly laugh.
I’m Ernie Bock, III
I have an e-mail
I have an opinion
I have a soul
I have a life
I love
I hate
I cry
I laugh
I breath
I sleep
I sneeze
I fart
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and I love pissing you guys off.
Welcome to my world.
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Sound almost like Dan Rather saying Well, somebody was able to prove that THESE documents were forged, but we are only acknowleding that incorrectness. No apology is necessary, becasue WE ALL KNOW that the underlying facts are true, even if we can’t find anybody to substantiate them.
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Bob – #1 is silly – you don’t set employemnt policy for WGBH.
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2 – It’s hard for people who know their hearts are pure to apoogize – especially in the bubble-dome-world of WGBH. Perhpas acknowledge he is doing the best he can? Isn’t that all that counts in Lefty World?
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3 – They would be scared to have a real, live blogger on the set – he might walk upright or something! Or believe himself to be an equal! No, videotape which can be edited will provide that level of necessary subserviance.
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PS – I too think David has been very gracious, which demonstrates that he is NOT a part of MSM Kultur.
Peter — I’m on “Beat the Press” about 20 times a year. I would like to think I’m a “real, live blogger,” although perhaps I have disqualified myself by not taking the BMG line.
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Bob — Your comment has already been posted. I screen them for spam. If Blogger.com had a good registration system, I’d use that instead.
Incidentally, I noted your concern in posts I wrote about this subject at myDD and dailyKos. We’ll see what suggestions their readers have.
We have to get to the bottom of this.
Bob —
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Good work! I read your post on myDD and see that you claim David Kravitz says he was “misquoted.” Not true, as you well know. He says his quotes were taken out of context. And how could it be otherwise? It was a video piece, not a news article.
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You also call John Carroll a “Boston journalism academic.” That must mean he teaches journalism, right? Wrong. He teaches advertising, and is not affiliated with the journalism department at BU.
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Jesus. I’ve got to get back to grading.
Here’s John’s BU bio:
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And here’s a story about an award he received:
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Hard to glean from anything I could find whether he teaches “advertising,” or “journalism,” or both, or neither — just that it’s something about mass media, which of course could be either. I’ll take your word for it.
A phone call would clear that up.
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What’s good for the goose, after all đŸ˜‰
But this all raises the further question: is John Carroll a “journalist”? [cue scary organ music]
David — All you (or Bob) would have had to do was go to BU’s Web site, see that the journalism and mass communication departments are completely separate, and bone up on their different missions. Etc., etc., etc. Sounds like what we’ve been hearing all week.
to flog this thoroughly dead horse a bit further, there’s a fairly obvious distinction between falsely accusing someone of large-scale deception and falsely “accusing” someone of being a journo prof when in fact he teaches mass communication. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to get our facts right — of course we should. But I am saying that John Carroll is unlikely to experience any deleterious consequences from having his area of expertise misdescribed, whereas anyone publicly accused of deceit on a grand scale must immediately go into full-time defense mode, and if the charge hadn’t been so easy to disprove it could have been quite a problem for him.
David —
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No, this isn’t a big deal, but it might say something about BMG’s standards for accuracy. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that you’ve pronounced this horse “thoroughly dead” just 39 minutes after it sprang to life.
How about settling this with a good old-fashioned manly softball game on the common? Bloggers vs. the MSM. (Some of us might have to play on both sides.) The losers buy the beer.
I agree that it would be pathetic if it weren’t so amusing. I think a spring softball game is an excellent idea.
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To the substance.
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First, thank you for your applause. “Good work,” you write upthread. I assume you believe the points you raise are comparable to the mistakes made by Carroll and the panel. Good luck with that.
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Second, to the best of my knowledge, we here at BMG have never made claims of infallability. In fact, just today I said I probably make more mistakes than John Carroll, which is saying a lot.
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Third, I agree John is an “Assistant Professor of Mass Communication,” at BU. Personally, I think my characterization of him as a “journalism academic” is flattering, but I have updated the myDD and dailyKos posts to include his full title.
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Fourth, I stand by my position that taking a video clip out of context is a form of misquoting. The Oxford American Dictionary defines misquoting as “a passage or remark quoted inaccurately,” which I believe is the essence of what happened here. However, since David himself feels that “taken out of context” is better than “misquoted,” and I described what David himself said, not what I think happened, I clarified that one too.
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I hereby apologize unreservedly to everyone who was misled by my characterization of an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication as a “journalism academic” and my conflation of “misquoted” with “a video clip taken out of context in a TV news report.”
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Finally, thanks Dan for helping to improve my piece!
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There, now that wasn’t so hard, was it. It didn’t take me four days, either. Let’s see how things go tomorrow. Good luck with the grading.
Bob: You wrote, “I assume you believe the points you raise are comparable to the mistakes made by Carroll and the panel.” Why are you assuming? Please stop! I mean, good Lord, you wrote that right under my comment saying it “isn’t a big deal.” In fact, sometimes the little things are especially telling. You can’t concede that “Greater Boston” didn’t misquote David, and you even go so far as to whip out the dictionary, seeming not to realize that it contradicts you. But you say you’ll go along out of deference to David. And then you congratulate yourself for coming clean, even though you still think David was “misquoted.”
I was mostly joking, plus giving you a hard time, with my crack about the applause line. As to the phraseology of what happened to David’s interview, I am happy to accept that he says his comments were taken out of context, as opposed to being “misquoted,” as I think I already said. Here is a virtual beer for you to enjoy after you finish grading: beer Now about that softball game …
I’ve watched BtP longer than I’ve been on BMG, and I’ve always thought your style to be that of an academic and analyst, rather than the usually frenzied and opinionated style of bloggers.
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But, you do have a blog, which is added to regularly, and is not entirely journalism based – you Sox posts, for instance – so I would defer to your self-identification.
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Are you going to tell EMILY that you’re a blogger? (Can I watch if you do?)
Peter: You can think of me any way you like. I’ve been blogging since 2002. I’ve been teaching since 2004, full-time since ’05.
In Dan Rather’s case, he got one piece of evidence wrong, after doing some research to verify it but not enough. However, his main story was entirely on the mark, his main points correct. And yet, he lost his job over it.
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In Beat the Press’s case, they got a piece of evidence wrong even though it was blatantly obvious, because they did no research to verify it. Not only that, but their entire story was way off, and their main points laughably wrong. And so far, all they’ve done is issue a correction for the one egregious factual error, without acknowledging the wrongness of the whole story. And nobody has lost their job so far.
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The effect is the opposite: In Dan Rather’s case, an understandable mistake derailed an important story that had merit, and derailed the journalist, to the detriment of the nation. In Beat the Press’s case, the story has no merit, but if the journalists aren’t derailed somewhat in reaction to their mistake, the press will lose credibility which it actually deserves to lose.
A six month leave is way out of proportion with how seriously people are likely to take this mistake. Perhaps that’s unfortunately, but it’s true. A symbolic unpaid leave (like a week) would be worthwhile and I hope WGBH considers it. If they did, I think everyone else there would think more carefully before making a truly stupid sloppy error like this.
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As for an apology, and having David on the show (or Jerome, for that matter), yes, exactly. Those are the right steps.
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It should be extremely embarassing to be caught believing something simply because it’s written on the Internet, particularly as part of a piece where you’re criticising the credibility of the very medium you’re believing. Heck, I’m one of those apparently ethically-challenged bloggers who’s been “on the take”, and I know better. I always seek some independent verification of a new fact I find on a blog before I blog about it, and if I can’t find such, I note that I haven’t verified it. Yes, really.
Make them humbly apologize and abjectly beg for forgiveness in Winthrop, and Boston, and Framingham and Worcester. And make them wear a hair shirt in Worcester, and Douglas, and all the way to North Adams!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEaaaaargh!!
I think “some” blogs are on the verge of becoming what they think “some” mainstream media have become. All the same sins are committed, some here, some elsewhere.
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There are blogs that have become hypercritical of the mainstream media; they jump all over every mistake or slight, even if only perceived. This incident may not be the best or only example. I recall a McGrory piece that was 75-80% positive for Deval that earned him a pile of scorn here. And he’s a guy that writes opinions.
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So when the MSM sees the same bias, undisclosed relationships, etc, why wouldn’t they call it out? It’s not as if the blog world has been kind when discussing the MSM. Nor has it been very humble when discussing the MSM or its own role in the world. For starters, any blog that doesn’t want to be lumped in with every other blog should immediately stop using the term mainstream media.
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So both the MSM and blogs take part in criticism that fails to distinguish factual reporting from opinion laden commentary. And they exagerate the significance of mistakes by the other side when they are not in their favor. They are Equal opportunity offenders.
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As in politics, the stone throwing between MSM and blogs could be a positive thing if it weren’t so childish and self-serving.
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On the anonymity of commentators, I don’t understand what the fuss is all about. Assume everyone has the agenda of their own ideas. Argue those.
except for the Equal opportunity offenders part. Compared to the impact of the MSM (Judith Miller), the blogosphere has been like a gnat. Granted that blogs have a rapidly growing audience, but it pales by comparison.
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I’m still surprised that WGBH hasn’t figured out how to turn this (mini?) dust-up into something positive. I don’t watch nearly as much political/media TV as I once did, due in large part to the growth of blogs. If a TV show that covered media, like BtP, included more blog related coverage, I’d be more inclined to watch. Is there a TV/MSM model out there that actually covers blogs, or is it too unwieldy? I plead ignorance.
You guys need some perspective. Really. You’re unhinged.