There have been two examples in the last week of the mistakes that the media can make. Two major news outlets were caught red handed, on the one hand pre-empting the news and on the other outright revising it.
On 1st October, the New York Times was caught changing the angle of its coverage of the Brooklyn Bridge incident, to present a series of events less friendly to the protesters and more friendly to the police.
This late alteration by the New York Times illustrates some problems:
- first, that vested interests in a particular message can (it would not be unreasonable to believe) encourage our confirmation bias, making it harder to see anything but the information that agrees with our own views;
- and second, that information is now spread so quickly that reporters have little time between events and deadlines, which has had consequences for the amount of time available for editorial scrutiny.
This short time window has generated a need to map out stories in advance of events. And it was this practice that caught out the Daily Mail, which incorrectly reported that Amanda Knox's appeal had been rejected by the Italian courts.
It is not always enough to regulate publishers, editors and the news media. They exist in a competitive market where your attention is the prize. Therefore the reader must always be vigilant - reading diverse and credibly sourced material to filter out the subjectivities of any single publication. The reader must now be a researcher and investigative journalist themselves in order to expose subjectivities behind reporting and get to the facts.
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References
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+ Kevin M. Lerner's coverage of the Times report & the internet's reaction.
+ Malcolm Coles discusses the Mail's slip up, along with similar slips by other news outlets.
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