Re: reporters getting it wrong

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 06:48 PM 1/15/2003 -0500, Rick Kelly wrote:
>On Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:29:59 -0500 "Paul Hopfgarten" <paul@03038.com>
>writes:
>
> > reporters get it wrong quite frequently,
>
>My favorite analogy is when on occasion you read a radio-related
>newspaper article, and you see all the mistakes in the article.  Now
>multiply that scenario by all information portrayed in the paper... it's
>gotta add up to a considerable amount of questionable information.  (I'm
>sure that mistakes are made in all kinds of media, BTW... not just
>newspapers.)
>
>-Rick Kelly
>www.northeastairchecks.com

This sort of highlights something that annoyed the heck out of me when in 
college....many college newspapers are RIDDLED with glaring inaccuracies, 
quotes taken WAY out of context, and sometimes just flat out lies.   I know 
that BU's own, the Daily Free Press, could have sued a dozen times each 
year I was at BU (94-98) if people actually cared enough to prosecute them 
for libel.   I read that rag every day (wanted to read SOMEthing while 
eating lunch) and was never disappointed in my hunt for errors.

But if we, as a journalistic society, are griping about errors in the 
"real" papers...why are we so tolerant of it in the student 
ones?  Shouldn't those papers be held perhaps to an even higher standard as 
we're supposed to be teaching kids how it's supposed to be done?

Donna...can you/will you :-) make any comment about the student papers at 
Emerson?  Are they "better" than the BU one about accuracy in reporting?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA