Why I largely don't care that the newspaper industry is crashing to the ground in a flaming heap

[andrewducker]

It's because 95% of the industry is completely corrupt and exists only to sell papers/adverts, not to have any relationship to the truth.

Take, for example, the recent Sunday Times story, which I saw echoed all over the web, saying that Richard Dawkins was going to try to arrest The Pope when he visits the UK.

Here's a quote from Mr Dawkins himself:

Marc Horne, the Sunday Times reporter, telephoned me out of the blue and asked whether I was aware of the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's visit. Yes, I said. He asked me if I was in favour of their initiative. Yes, I said, I am strongly in favour of it. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horne, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article here: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5341
How the headline writer could go from there to "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" is obscure to me.

Sadly, it's not obscure to me. The process is "That quote wasn't nearly exciting enough, I'll just make shit up."

The next time someone says "We need newspapers because their system of editors and their reputation make them more trustworthy than bloggers." I'm going to laugh in their face.

(cheers to supergee for the link to Dawkins' response)

Comments

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Just to play Devil's Advocate here (disclaimer, I work for a newspaper) there are a fair number of biased bloggers, the difference being that blatantly wrong statements by reporters are usually found out and punished by a regulatory body - bloggers have no such system.

That and I like print media, it's much nicer to hold ;)

[andrewducker]

I disagree that blatantly wrong statements by reporters are usually punished. From my reading it seems that 99% of the time they get away with it. Unless someone with some clout sues you're stuck with the PCC, which doesn't seem to actually have much in the way of teeth.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Ah, well then comment rescinded. However with a fully armed complaints commission there would hopefully be a dramatic drop in lying reporters.

[andrewducker]

But not, probably, the incompetent ones. Like the ones (pretty much all of them) that went to Wikipedia for information on Mephedrone and believed the vandalism there about it's nickname being "Meow Meow". Or the one in today's Guardian who referred to "Sam Raimi, the American director and actor" presumably because they popped to the IMDB or Wikipedia and noticed that he'd been in a few movies, but didn't know that those were cameos in his own movies.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Behavior like this is inexcusable, but there's got to be a good reason for it. Perhaps it's because a lot of graduates seem to use wikipedia as an actual source of valid information, rather than simply a source that requires seperate validation.

In that case I'd be interested to see if there's a correlation between reporters that base their stories primarily on facts from Wikipedia, and the age of those reporters.

[andrewducker]

Not an excuse. The claim is that newspapers have editors and oversight so that you can trust them. Letting newly-graduated reporters loose on the pages without oversight removes any belief I have in that process. If they're going to let people just write whatever they like then they're nothing more than a blog aggregator with a mast-head, and I'm buggered if I'm going to pay for that.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I really don't think I can come up with a convincing counter-arguement then. I guess I've just got the same feeling I had whilst watching that Wiki-Leaks - I don't want to believe it's true.

It's really difficult to watch an industry that's already doing so badly manage to muck things up further.

[andrewducker]

Well, there is a place for a decent newspaper. One that actually puts the effort in and produces reliable information. I'd pay for that, and I'm sure others would too.

And they wouldn't need to have a style section, so that would save some cash :->

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Well I've already tried to produce something like that once, a second shot can't hurt...

[avatar.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the media is perceived by the public to be reporting the truth, and bloggers are generally expected to have some bias.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Or here's one from the front page of one of the Irish papers:

'Expert says 'head' shops may kill more people than swine flu'.

Deceptive on multiple levels.

[broin.livejournal.com]

"Diller, Brill, and Murdoch seem be stating a simple fact—we will have to pay them—but this fact is not in fact a fact. Instead, it is a choice, one its proponents often decline to spell out in full, because, spelled out in full, it would read something like this:

“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”"

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/

Great article.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Lol, Andy linked to this himself - with that exact quote - weeks ago.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Shite, really?

Thanks. :D

[andrewducker]

Fraid so. According to delicious I bookmarked it on the 1st, so it probably got posted on the 2nd.

Fuck!

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Bastards! Way to polarise society! Complete fucking bastards.

Re: Fuck!

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Update: Ironically, a lot of people on the comment thread think Dawkins should do just that.

Re: Fuck!

[marrog.livejournal.com]

This feels like it wasn't a comment on this post. What?

Am responding to what the Sunday Times did

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

"Here's a quote from Mr Dawkins himself:
Marc Horne, the Sunday Times reporter, telephoned me out of the blue and asked whether I was aware of the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's visit. Yes, I said. He asked me if I was in favour of their initiative. Yes, I said, I am strongly in favour of it. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horne, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article here: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5341
How the headline writer could go from there to "Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" is obscure to me."

Re: Fuck!

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

He was referring to the "religious vs. atheist Cage Match" that was assumed in the article.

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

I agree with you.

TV viewership is has also been steadily declining, and the so-called "news programs" that Homer Simpson aptly named, "infotainment," are full of shit. That's why only "Tea Party" and "Birther" idiots believe that shit.

Journalism has become a bad joke being played on the American people, most of whom are woefully ignorant about anything outside their own little world.

But their ignorance, in large part, is not their fault. It's hard to be informed when all you get is hyperbole and invective disguised as "journalism." Yet a certain percentage of those who enjoy remaining ignorant continue to turn on Faux News, and they think they're "informed."

We ignore the fact that we're engaged in two wars, neither of which is going well. (Ask an Iraqi how things are where he/she is living.) Afghanistan is a stalemate that will not change, regardless of how many young lives and billions of dollars we throw at it.

There's so many other things that we hear nothing about, unless we go to a foreign news web site and get lucky.

[andrewducker]

Sadly, the same is true a lot of the time in the UK, although it seems to be to a lesser extent. Thank goodness for the BBC!

[moniqueleigh]

And this would by why my family thinks I'm insane. They all listen to American "news" programming (papers/TV) and don't realize that the rest of the world has a rather different perspective on the goings-on. I, otoh, actually pay attention to the news reported elsewhere (like Andy says, thank goodness for the Beeb!) and so am considered to be some crazy nut-job flaming liberal. *sigh*

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

You're not alone. There are many friends and family that are (sadly) deluded by our mainstream media.

[neuralbuddha.livejournal.com]

Also this. I don't know if you know about this guy but he's worth reading if you're interested in marketing, web 2.0 and related topics.

[andrewducker]

That's a good piece. Although I've seen a couple of breakdowns of book pricing, and the cost of the actual paper isn't that high - more of it is in the editing, etc.

I always enjoy Seth Godin pieces when I see them on Hacker News, but I've never got round to adding him to my reader. I'll do so now!