‘YES, IT REALLY MATTERS!’ Mary Katharine Ham is willing to be ‘the skunk at the garden party’ who won’t indulge WaPo et al.’s journalistic malpractice
http://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2021/03/15/yes-it-really-matters-mary-katharine-ham-is-willing-to-be-the-skunk-at-the-garden-party-who-wont-indulge-wapo-et-al-s-journalistic-malpractice/
The Washington Post has found themselves in yet another embarrassing situation, what with having to issue a “correction” to a story that dominated the election season news cycle:
Mark Hemingway ~ This kind of mistake is beyond serious. There's zero accountability in major corporate media anymore, yet they continually insist they're the ones holding the line on the truth. And always remember what should scare you about the media is what *doesn't get exposed."
Well, first of all, Mark ... this was NOT a MISTAKE ... it was wholly intentional on the part of the sleazy WaPo.
The Washington Post’s false narrative was picked up and amplified by multiple major MSM outlets. But in all likelihood, no one will have to answer for it.
Greg Price ~ Nobody at WaPo will be held accountable for reporting fake quotes from anonymous sources attributed to the president of the United States that were completely made up because corporate media is a blatantly corrupt enterprise.
Well, apparently some people out there don’t seem to think it’s worth holding WaPo accountable for their egregious journalistic malpractice.
For what it’s worth, Mary Katharine Ham disagrees, and for what it’s worth, she’s exactly right:
Mary Katharine Ham ~ For those in my timeline asking me if it really matters bc Trump bad anyway, YES, IT REALLY MATTERS! Quotes being correct matters A LOT. Don’t you see that’s the issue? If a reporter is so dead sure, that “Trump bad anyway,” he is less inclined to question or vet his own stories.
If the entirety of the structure in a reporter’s industry is super duper sure that “Trump bad anyway,” it can lead to really bad incentives and bad reporting, as illustrated here!
No one likes the skunk at the garden party, but I’ll be damned if journalism doesn’t need far, far more of them to stink up the joint with their skepticism.
If this reads like a self-serving advertisement for ideological skunks, then you can call me Le Pew.
And don’t give me the “corrections are an example of the system working” stuff. Sometimes they are! Here, they’re coming in 3 mos later when they were outed by a recording & the correction & new story are designed to downplay as much as possible, not blare as loudly as original.
The story didn’t just need to be corrected; it needed to be retracted. If the Washington Post were serious about journalism, they’d retract it very, very publicly.
Of course, if the Washington Post were serious about journalism, they never would’ve published the story in the first place.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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