Ace points to a conversation between Ross Douthat and Jonathan Chait about the Scott Beauchamp affair. Ross talks about the excellence of the Atlantic’s fact-checking process, and Ace mentions that Jonathan Chait seems rather surprised that the fact-checkers actuallly call up article sources and ask if they are being quoted accurately.
I find it shocking that a senior editor at TNR would seem so unversed in the process of fact-checking. I spent a fair amount of time in magazine publishing during my typesetting/desktop publishing career. One of my stints was as a typesetter at New Woman, a monthly women’s magazine owned by K-III Magazines, which was one of the biggest cheapskate corporations in the publishing world back then. Most people aspired to get enough experience on a K-III magazine to go work for Conde Nast or some other publisher that paid much better. But even this cheapskate monthly women’s magazine had a fact-checker, and his fact-checking was superb. I often heard him on the phone during the workday. He called every author’s interview subject to make sure that the subject said what the author quoted them as saying. He checked the accuracy of the facts of each story, either with reference books or by calling agencies referred to in articles. Nothing got into the magazine without being thoroughly fact-checked. And this was all for a women’s magazine that ran articles on fashion, diet, exercise, and women’s issues.
To find that neither Slate nor TNR has fact-checking as thorough as the underpaid twentysomething assistant editors I worked with at New Woman is a very sad reflection on the state of Slate and TNR—not on the state of fact-checking.
Hey, the story ‘smelled good’ (actually quote from TNR) so it must be true! Its the new ‘fake but accurate’.
The Weekly Standard is claiming that Beauchamp has recanted during the first day of the military investigation. If true, this means that TNR was still claiming they had confirmation of the stories while Beauchamp himself was denying them.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/beauchamp_recants.asp
It’s not so much that they failed to fact-check (although that in itself is a shocking omission from the mag “victimized” by Stephen Glass and Evie Fairbanks’ fabrications). The final straw is that they CLAIMED to have fact-checked the articles when questions arose, and had not.
How stupid do you have to be not to realize the gig is up?
You’ve got a bad link, Meryl, for your “Ace points to a conversation” reference.
That’s how you get “monkey fishing.”
I completely forgot about monkeyfishing. Yeah, you have to be seven kinds of stupid to not fact-check something like that.
I’m sorry, but I have been caught out exactly once in six years of blogging, by the “naked paintball” article. And that’s because my bullshit detector was overwhelmed by my feminist outrage.
Having worked in the publishing industry for many years before becoming a blogger, I know how easy it is to hire and keep a decent fact-checker. Slate and TNR should be ashamed of not having the pride in their own work to make sure their facts are correct.
I’m not surprised. Jayson Blair demonstrated to the world that even the New York Times has no problem running complete works of fiction, as long as the fiction is politically correct. The Times only got upset when the rest of the world found out, and their response was simply to fire the person in the spotlight and do nothing to change their editorial policies.
Given the number of outright lies from AP you’re always pointing out, this should really come as no surprise. You don’t think their incompetence only applies to articles about Israel, do you?
The New Republic wanted to believe this crap and that’s why they published it without confirmation.
The same thing happened to a breathless Rather and his CBS expose’ of President Bush’s National Guard service.
The media has two standards, one for reinforcement of their own personal ideology, and another, when it is contrary to their opinion.
No wonder they are losing readership.