"Touching up" the news
Reading a New York Times columnist's piece today on the subject of Lou Dobbs, the pontifical CNN commentator, reminds me of a story I heard while working on the Chicago Tribune. The Times columnist, David Leonhardt, in his column headlined "Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs" accuses Dobbs, of purveying false information on various topics on his TV show.
The story that I heard while working on the Tribune during the summer between my junior and senior years in college goes like this:
A cub reporter on the Tribune, who has been on the job only a few days, is called to the city editor's desk and told that a huge fire is on going on at the corner of two streets he names (let's say at X and Y streets) and to get there and cover it. The young reporter, being from some other place and knowing very little about locations in Chicago, goes out and asks a policeman how to get to the corner of X and Y streets. The cop tells the young man that there is no such corner--that X and Y streets are parallel to each other.
A few hours later, the reporter turns in a story about a 12-alarm blaze that brought out dozens of pieces of equipment and hundreds of firefighters, about people jumping from windows in upper stories into safety nets set up on the ground below and of others being brought down ladders by firemen, about spectators saying that this was the biggest fire ever in that section of the city, and so on.
But, after turning in the story, the cub reporter has second thoughts. He asks himself, "Why did I have to be such a wiseguy? Why didn't I just realize that the editor was playing a trick on me, and say 'Good joke, sir'?" And he worries, "I'm going to get the axe for this." The longer he waits to be called in by the editor, the more panicky he becomes.
Finally, he is called in, shaking as he goes. As he enters, the editor continues looking at the cub's story for several seconds, then looks up and says, "Pretty good story, young man. It's OK to touch up a story a little bit to make it more interesting to the reader."
With so many news sources and so much spinning of the news today, we, the public, have to constantly be alert to such "touching up." Checking in with the website FactCheck at http://www.factcheck.org/ is one way to be alert.
The story that I heard while working on the Tribune during the summer between my junior and senior years in college goes like this:
A cub reporter on the Tribune, who has been on the job only a few days, is called to the city editor's desk and told that a huge fire is on going on at the corner of two streets he names (let's say at X and Y streets) and to get there and cover it. The young reporter, being from some other place and knowing very little about locations in Chicago, goes out and asks a policeman how to get to the corner of X and Y streets. The cop tells the young man that there is no such corner--that X and Y streets are parallel to each other.
A few hours later, the reporter turns in a story about a 12-alarm blaze that brought out dozens of pieces of equipment and hundreds of firefighters, about people jumping from windows in upper stories into safety nets set up on the ground below and of others being brought down ladders by firemen, about spectators saying that this was the biggest fire ever in that section of the city, and so on.
But, after turning in the story, the cub reporter has second thoughts. He asks himself, "Why did I have to be such a wiseguy? Why didn't I just realize that the editor was playing a trick on me, and say 'Good joke, sir'?" And he worries, "I'm going to get the axe for this." The longer he waits to be called in by the editor, the more panicky he becomes.
Finally, he is called in, shaking as he goes. As he enters, the editor continues looking at the cub's story for several seconds, then looks up and says, "Pretty good story, young man. It's OK to touch up a story a little bit to make it more interesting to the reader."
With so many news sources and so much spinning of the news today, we, the public, have to constantly be alert to such "touching up." Checking in with the website FactCheck at http://www.factcheck.org/ is one way to be alert.
posted by Mycroft Watson at 2:02 PM
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2 Comments:
Mycroft - I have another excellent source for the real news: It's called Fox News, www.foxnews.com. Why anyone with a brain would spend a minute of their life watching or reading anything on CNN is puzzling. Talk about "Spin Doctors". Has your factcheck.org site done any fact checking on the Nancy Pelosi-run Congress? If I check my facts, they have accomplished nothing of significance (legislation or otherwise, nor have the they done anything to capture any swing votes. Considering the Democratic Party is parading out Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama as their "stars" (who are completely unelectable), I'm afraid you'll have to suffer through another Presidential term lead by a Republican. Hope all is well - love to Mom! Anonymous.
Forgot to mention - I thoroughly enjoyed the blog posting and your Tribune memory. Good stuff! Anonymous.
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