Journalism's "Achilles heel" exposed in Duke rape hoax

[pnwmom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702078.html

"Overall, coverage of the Duke case suffered from a common journalistic malady: dependence on "the authorities"; in this case, prosecutor Michael B. Nifong, who now faces ethics charges. Journalists almost always depend first on the official explanation, whether of police, prosecutors, government spokesmen, the military or "experts." That is journalism's Achilles heel, whether it involves intelligence on Iraqi weapons or a rape charge in Durham."


Something to remember . . .

[TahitiNut]

1. Pravda ... metastacized.

:shrug:

[donco6]

2. Yes.

Are there any signs that journalists are having a change of heart? I've not seen much . . . and that's not good.

[EST]

3. And Deborah Howell is suddenly the reporter's conscience and

ethical director because of what?

This dull-witted paragon of pickle barrel philosophy is in no way qualified to be analyzing any reporter/investigator/stenographer's guiding principles or ideology.

Sickening lump of excrescence.

[pnwmom]

4. Are you disputing the message or merely shooting the messenger?

[EST]

8. I stopped beating my wife last week.

Are you aware of who Ms. Howell is and her history?

[pnwmom]

10. No. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

And she is right that the media was too quick to swallow the authority's line on the Duke case, as well as the Bush administration's line on the Iraq war.

It's the job of the media to investigate the facts, not just serve as a mouthpiece for those in power.

[EST]

12. Deborah Howell is the person that WaPo hired as a purported

"ombudsman," because the paper was so mired in right field and sinking. Progressives, liberals, even moderates and democrats of all stripes were treated like pure poison and the paper's circulation was taking a nose dive.

Instead of being the "go to" person and turning the tide by being a buffer between (primarily) the left and the starkly Republican drift, this "ombudsperson" turned out to be a mentally deranged right wingy thingy with a long history of flubbing the dud and exercising questionable ethical and moral reasoning.

When she pulled some particularly egregious editorial gaffe, the demands for her ouster were legion. The WaPo email server area loaded up with protests and condemnation, whereupon she did a gonzo and, while lying that the emails were all so crude that they shouldn't see the light of day, she yanked them all and shut down the reply function. The public outcry was so great it forced her boss to direct her to reopen the messaging, to a limited degree, and re-post the messages-except for a vanishing few that may have been a little hard core for an open forum.

The upshot of it all was that it proved she was a coward and an inveterate liar and that she was abjectly unqualified for that job, although she refused to step down and they refused to fire her.

She remains, a vicious, rightwing shill whose writings, as lousy as they are, are under control of the r/w slime/attack machine and if she writes something that we approve of, better look again: it's a trick and we are gonna regret it.

Do a search on her name in the DU archives and take a gander at some of the threads from a year ago or a little more. It is quite instructive.

[pnwmom]

13. That's interesting, but you still haven't addressed the point she made.

And if a right-winger is making the case that the media was too quick to accept the Bush administration's line on Iraq, I think that's a good thing.

[OHdem10]

5. This is eactly the whole point in "Buying the War"

Just as in the runup to War In Iraq, the Journalist
simply takes notes and repeat the government line.
So eager to get something on the Air(TV) they go
with the first line they are given. Duke Case
plays this out in spades.

[MadBadger]

6. This wasnt only the media however. Look no further than DU to see similar things done.

[pnwmom]

7. It was scary to see how many people believed Nifong,

in the face of obvious evidence (like all the contradictory testimony and the failed DNA tests last April) simply because he was the prosecutor -- the authority -- and therefore he must be right.

[MadBadger]

9. In America, it is Guilty until proven innocent when it comes to the Media

OJ, Scott Peterson, the Duke boys, they were all convicted before the trial even occurred. I think that in a rape case like this, just like the accuser's identity remains unknown, the same should go for the defendants.

[pnwmom]

11. I'm beginning to move in the other direction.

We started keeping accusers' names confidential when "blaming the victim" was still a large problem. I think we may be at the point where keeping the accuser's name secret actually reinforces the idea that being raped is somehow shameful, different from other violent crimes. I'm leaning toward thinking that this crime should be treated like any other, out in the open.