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Washington Post reports that they publish fake news.

washunut said:
Lets remember this is not just the error of the reporter. There are assistant editors and editors that get paid a lot of money to read stories and make sure they are accurate.

It would be fair to ask who is getting fired or at least reprimanded for this fairly major mistake.
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It was two very experienced reporters, which makes it even more ironic:
Juliet Eilperin is The Washington Post's White House bureau chief, covering domestic and foreign policy as well as the culture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is the author of two books—one on sharks, and another on Congress, not to be confused with each other—and has worked for the Post since 1998.
Follow @eilperin
Adam Entous writes about national security, foreign policy and intelligence for The Post. He joined the newspaper in 2016 after more than 20 years with The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, where he covered the Pentagon, the CIA, the White House and Congress. He covered President George W. Bush for five years after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
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... am I supposed to criticize them for admitting to a mistake?
 
NonoBadDog said:
A journalist with the intelligence of a third grader would have contacted Burlington Electric before even writing a draft of the story, if that journalist had any basic skills or ethics. This isn't the Weekly Reader or some anon blog we are talking about. This is the Washington Post. You might buy that BS but I don't.

Forbes Welcome
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You linked to someone who is speculating that they didn't contact them.

So I ask my question again. How do you know they didn't contact them? How do you know they didn't get a "we aren't responding to any questions at this time" comment and then change their minds when they read the incorrect info that was given to the WP?
 
roughdraft274 said:
So they corrected themselves and published so much in a full article as soon as they realized it?

I wish conservative/republicans had a better understanding of the purpose of media.
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If the Washington Post was genuinely good journalism, it wouldn't post retractions or followup articles correcting past stories.
 
roughdraft274 said:
You linked to someone who is speculating that they didn't contact them.

So I ask my question again. How do you know they didn't contact them? How do you know they didn't get a "we aren't responding to any questions at this time" comment and then change their minds when they read the incorrect info that was given to the WP?
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I linked to more than that. You are being obtuse.
 
Cardinal said:
If the Washington Post was genuinely good journalism, it wouldn't post retractions or followup articles correcting past stories.
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If it was genuinely good journalism it would have waited for comment from Burlington Electric.

As I noted yesterday, it seemed odd that Burlington Electric issued a formal response refuting the Post’s claims just an hour and a half after the Post’s publication. This would suggest that the Post would have gotten a response from Burlington if only it had just contacted the utility prior to publication, as is required by standard journalistic practice.

In fact, when I asked the Post why it had not contacted the utilities prior to publication, in her emailed response to me, Ms. Coratti asserted that the Post had indeed contacted both utilities for comment prior to publication and had not received a reply from either and so proceeded with publication. In fact, she went as far as to state “we had contacted the state’s two major power suppliers, as these sentences from the first version of the story attest: ‘It is unclear which utility reported the incident. Officials from two major Vermont utilities, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric, could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.’"

If this statement was present in the very first version of the story published at 7:55PM, that would mean that the Post had reached out to the companies for comment prior to publication and received no response.
However, as the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows, this is actually false. Archived snapshots of the story at 8:16PM and 8:46PM make no claims about having contacted either utility and state instead only that “While it is unclear which utility reported the incident, there are just two major utilities in Vermont, Green Mountain Power and Burlington Electric.” No claim is made anywhere in the article about the Post having contacted the utilities for comment.

In fact, it was not until an hour after publication, somewhere between 8:47PM and 9:24PM that the Post finally updated its story to include the statement above that it had contacted the two utilities for comment.
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Forbes Welcome
 
joG said:
Compared to what?
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The US does pretty well with regards to individual news media and especially because there is so much variety of opinion to check things.
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I might ask the same question, compared to what?
 
NonoBadDog said:
If it was genuinely good journalism it would have waited for comment from Burlington Electric.


Forbes Welcome
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And if it was genuinely good journalism, it wouldn't have bothered with the correction and just moved on to the next incomplete story like rag sites like ThinkProgress and Breitbart do.
 
NonoBadDog said:
I linked to more than that. You are being obtuse.
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None of it was more than speculation.

Typical bull****. Quit whining without any evidence. Trump doesn't run these forums and people don't buy your bull**** like you buy Trumps.
 
roughdraft274 said:
So they corrected themselves and published so much in a full article as soon as they realized it?

I wish conservative/republicans had a better understanding of the purpose of media.
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Better to vet your stories BEFORE you publish. I wish liberals/"others" had a better understanding of the purpose of media.
 
Taylor said:
Better to vet your stories BEFORE you publish. I wish liberals/"others" had a better understanding of the purpose of media.
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Can you give me a specific of how they should have vetted the story better prior to publishing?
 
roughdraft274 said:
Can you give me a specific of how they should have vetted the story better prior to publishing?
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Looks like they published a bunch of speculation before any experts weighed in. Publishing assumptions and guesswork is not good journalism.
 
Taylor said:
Looks like they published a bunch of speculation before any experts weighed in. Publishing assumptions and guesswork is not good journalism.
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They published information they had gotten from a supposedly credible source which was a federal investigator according to them. I'd hardly call it just speculation.

So do you have any specifics or are you just going to call it "guesswork"?
 
roughdraft274 said:
They published information they had gotten from a supposedly credible source which was a federal investigator according to them. I'd hardly call it just speculation.

So do you have any specifics or are you just going to call it "guesswork"?
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I see references to "officials" but whoever it was clearly didn't know what they were talking about and shouldn't have been used as a source by the Washington Post. As soon as the story was published the internet blew up with people calling BS on their claims.
 
Taylor said:
I see references to "officials" but whoever it was clearly didn't know what they were talking about and shouldn't have been used as a source by the Washington Post. As soon as the story was published the internet blew up with people calling BS on their claims.
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Where is this mystery land that you think we live in where no one gets anything wrong?

Also, still no specifics.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Just saying, following through on journalism basics of the story would have served them better than reporting it as fast as possible.
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No media company follows the basics anymore. When News Corp took over national geographic, the first thing they did was get rid of the fact checking department to save money.
 
roughdraft274 said:
Where is this mystery land that you think we live in where no one gets anything wrong?

Also, still no specifics.
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Did you not read the article? The WP themselves finally admitted they got the facts wrong.
 
RAMOSS said:
No media company follows the basics anymore. When News Corp took over national geographic, the first thing they did was get rid of the fact checking department to save money.
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Doesn't excuse another paper's actions.
 
OpportunityCost said:
Doesn't excuse another paper's actions.
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No, but it does show the trend in modern 'news'. There are only 6 media companies that provide major news now, when there used to be over 50. One thing they have in common is 1) they eliminated or drastically reduced the budget for investigative reporting and 2) they reduced or eliminated fact checking departments.
 
RAMOSS said:
No, but it does show the trend in modern 'news'. There are only 6 media companies that provide major news now, when there used to be over 50. One thing they have in common is 1) they eliminated or drastically reduced the budget for investigative reporting and 2) they reduced or eliminated fact checking departments.
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Sure, source that up.
 
NonoBadDog said:
They didn't talk to Burlington Electric before they published the article. They had a "gotcha" moment and wet themselves without verifying their information "cuz Russians". WaPo is as bad as CNN.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...6f69a399dd5_story.html?utm_term=.cc075a4e40c0
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Infowars publishes an article that says Hillary Clinton is the leader of a worldwide sex trafficking operation - for children. Makes a lot of money. Story debunked. Deletes articles and never issues apologies.

Washington Post corrects a detail from a story they published. Still online with the editor's note. The rest of the story is true, minus that one detail.

Rolling Stone publishes an article about a woman who was sexually assaulted at a college campus. Facts not checked prior to publication. Full retraction made. They looked like idiots.

In the three above examples, Infowars published fake news. The Washington Post published a story that was partially incorrect. Rolling Stone published an untrue story. It wasn't fake -- the central figure was lying. What's the difference? The only one of these that is fake (the Infowars story) is entirely made up and has made thousands if not millions of people believe a lie because it is willfully dishonest and never corrected. How dense does a person have to be to not understand this?
 
Mustachio said:
Infowars publishes an article that says Hillary Clinton is the leader of a worldwide sex trafficking operation - for children. Makes a lot of money. Story debunked. Deletes articles and never issues apologies.

Washington Post corrects a detail from a story they published. Still online with the editor's note. The rest of the story is true, minus that one detail.

Rolling Stone publishes an article about a woman who was sexually assaulted at a college campus. Facts not checked prior to publication. Full retraction made. They looked like idiots.

In the three above examples, Infowars published fake news. The Washington Post published a story that was partially incorrect. Rolling Stone published an untrue story. It wasn't fake -- the central figure was lying. What's the difference? The only one of these that is fake (the Infowars story) is entirely made up and has made thousands if not millions of people believe a lie because it is willfully dishonest and never corrected. How dense does a person have to be to not understand this?
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WaPo published a story that mostly incorrect. The only thing they got right was there was malware and a computer. The Rolling Stone's reporter didn't follow up or do proper corroboration. She just ran with a story that struck at a cause that hit her personally and abandoned everything she learned about journalistic ethics in school. She tried to destroy a guys life because the story struck her emotionally. Everything in the article was a fabrication. That is fake news.
 
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