Seriously, I’d love to just rant all day long about media stupidity, and why I can’t stand watching TV news, and why you should select your “journalists of record” carefully. (The list of tech journalists I trust is short–the list of IT tech journalists I trust is VERY short).
Instead of doing that, I’ll just link to other people’s rants. Today’s rant comes from Danny Sullivan, who is definitely on my short list of brilliant tech writers. Sullivan broke a nifty story last week about a lady who is suing Google because Google Maps’ walking directions allegedly directed her, on foot, onto a highway where she was hit by a car.
Great story with all the right ingredients: a crazy lady we can all shake our heads at, who had a problem we can all identify with (who hasn’t been led astray by Google Maps at some time or other?) And it plays perfectly into the whole “don’t trust technology” mindset that old people love, and the “haha stupid people” mindset that young people love.
Anyway, a tipster led Sullivan to the story, and he posted it on SearchEngineLand. And a million news outlets piled onto the story, like they always do, including TV, radio, other bloggers, and professional reporters. And, as always happens, Sullivan’s site got very little credit for breaking the story, even though his screenshot was repurposed (read: stolen) by lots of reputable news sites.
You might not think this is such a big deal…but that’s only because you’re not running a blog that needs eyeballs to pay the bills, and you didn’t just get stiffed out of what could have been a million page views had everyone attributed properly.
But beyond the laziness/churlishness/competitiveness that keeps reporters from citing their sources, the bigger concern is the lazy reporting that lets this happen. I’ve seen it up-close and first-hand–a story breaks, and everyone uses that original story as the source material for their own reporting. These me-too stories almost never have sufficient fact-checking, because hey, this other reporter already did the verifying, right? And so from time to time you get flat-out wrong stories that are repeated far and wide before anyone figures out that there are mistakes. I know professional reporters who almost never pick up the phone or email ANYONE for verification…their “reporting” consists of grabbing recent stories and boiling them down a bit. On any given day, go to Google News or TechMeme to see these bloggers and reporters in action, piling onto stories but adding nothing original.
If you’re a news hound, watch out for journalists and news sources that do that (like, um, every TV news program except 60 Minutes and the Sunday morning shows). Breaking news is hard, and rare, and expensive. We ought to value news outlets that make the investment to provide original reporting.
While I’m running my mouth fingers, here ‘s a bonus tip:
- Don’t trust news outlets that use journalists as sources. Journalists interviewing journalists = big red flag. Means the TV producer is too lazy or too busy to get someone who is actually involved in the story, so they turn to an attention-hungry journalist who wants some camera time. I’ll tell some embarrassing stories about my own TV appearances someday, but for now, it suffices to say that I was rarely adequately prepared or expert on the subjects I was talking about.
Anyway, go read Sullivan’s rant. It’s a great look at the day-to-day hustle of breaking news and watching your story blow up.
I’ve been a bit lazy at blog reading lately, so this response isn’t timely. But I wanted to comment because you’ve done a nice job confirming what I’ve long figured to be a problem in modern journalism. I suppose it’s easy for the outlets to be lazy. The ease at which information can be broadcast and perpetuated with the aid of modern technology makes it easy. In your example, Sullivan’s story is picked up by numerous outlets who can easily “report” the story in a way that cloaks the fact they are really acting merely as a distributor of the story. Regardless of how they pass along the story – print, TV, radio – they easily avoid tipping off the consumer that they did not originate the story. And naturally they wouldn’t want to. What news outlet what’s to be known simply for passing along stories? And of course, as you pointed out, that’s a lot cheaper than actually doing legitimate research. And I’m so glad you mentioned the journalists interviewing journalists’ red flag. I can’t stand that. Such a waste of time to listen to that exchange. I’m not a big fan of local news because it just feels kind of corny to me, but at least they are out on the streets tracking down leads and talking with people to get the story.
Ok, so Danny Sullivan is a good one. Would love to hear some other names from your short list.
I like Joel Johnson, Gina Trapani, Sascha Segan, Pete Rojas, Owen Thomas, sometimes Kara Swisher, Clint Boulton, Brian Krebs…there are a few. Mary Jo Foley is, for me, the perfect example of a tech journalist: Someone who covers Microsoft exclusively, and gets TONS of scoops, but with officially restricted access to the top execs because she pisses MSFT off so frequently. That’s the way the news is supposed to be reported, I think!
The anti-MJFs are David Pogue and Walt Mossberg, who get every Apple device early because Apple knows they’ll never say anything bad. Mossberg also has a habit of breaking embargoes, which screws everyone over (even the reader, believe it or not).
Gizmodo had the best scoop of the decade with that iPhone story, and I respect them for doing what they did. Same with Rolling Stone this week–do the digging, gather the information, and pass it along, even if it means pissing off powerful people that can make life hard for you.
We need more news outlets that are willing to do that.