aaack! they’ve airbrushed the errors
Thanks to TGW, I’ve discovered that the Tennessean corrected an incorrect statistic that I pointed out on Saturday
Now, I didn’t have much of a beef with the Tennessean. The offending statistic was in the “Nashville Eye” column on the opinion page. I’ve written a couple myself, and I know that the paper extends a lot of latitude to its guest writers.
What I do have a problem with is running the ex post facto expurgated column. The corrected op/ed loses all of its punch because the original relied on a horribly flawed statistic—since corrected. Once its veracity was disproven, the Tennessean, if it wanted to eliminate the error, would have done better to simply remove the article entirely.
This is one area where bloggers generally perform better than the mainstream media. As this is a running medium (versus a newspaper being a snapshot in time), bloggers continuously note updates and changes to their earlier posts. I don’t want to get into the whole blog v msm debate–each has its strengths and weaknesses . . . however, one clear strength of the blogger is that we don’t paper over our errors.
UPDATE: Ron, a BillHobbs.com reader, has the best take on what Stroup/the Tennessean should have said after being notified of the original error. Channeling Rosanne Rosannadanna: "Never mind!"
August 16th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
One in Four?
Karen Stroup, an adjunct professor at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, writing in a “Nashville Eye” column in the Friday Tennessean:I was recently astounded to learn that 25% of TennCare enrollees are employed by Wal-Mart. It did not take muc…
August 16th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
One in Four?
Karen Stroup, an adjunct professor at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School, writing in a “Nashville Eye” column in the Friday Tennessean:I was recently astounded to learn that 25% of TennCare enrollees are employed by Wal-Mart. It did not take muc…
August 16th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Online MSM generally documents changes with at least a notice that the piece has been updated, along with the date of said update.
I used to write a fair amount of Nashville Eye columns, but tended to be anal about getting my facts straight. In my view, if it’s in the newspaper, the responsibility for errors lies with the paper.
Presumably they have editors; I’m not at all sure they have fact-checkers, cuz I’ve seen too many factual errors.
August 16th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
Egalia, you’re correct on both counts. The Tennessean should have noted the old error on line. And they are responsible for the facts in their paper.
On that latter note, what do you do about a syndicated column that is obviously wrong? A recent example was the Molly Ivins piece where she overestimated by about twenty-fold the civilian death toll in Iraq.
To her credit, Ivins herself pointed out the error in a later column. But should the paper fact check/edit work not original to them? I don’t think they can.
I bet that this kerfuffle causes the Tennessean to be a little more careful about its next Nashville Eye column–and that’s a good thing.
One other note. Another plus of blogs is that we can embed our sources in the article. It’s like instant footnoting. A static hardcopy newspaper has no such ability to link to original sources.