I've come here with gripes about the Washington Post's coverage of the internet before, and before I do it again, I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE the articles written by the Post's main "strange stuff on the Internet" beat writer, Monica Hesse. Her writing is engaging, funny, and --most importantly here--relevant.
But Hesse didn't write today's A1 article, and the reporter who did was clearly doing a content-strapped editor a favor.
Here's the headline and lede:
4chan users seize Internet's power for mass disruptions
One morning in June, Google's list of the top global searches began to fill up with random words: "fried chicken," "comic book stores," "gyms." Before anyone could stop it, a racial slur jumped to the No. 1 spot.
And here's graf number five (emphasis mine):
Created seven years ago by a 15-year-old, 4chan is a vast web of anonymous, uncensored message boards. No one's in charge, but the site's users have managed to pull off some of the highest-profile collective actions in the history of the Internet.
As far as I can tell, this is a story about a phenomenon that is seven years old, with a news hook that is two months old.
To make matters worse, Hesse wrote a profile about 4chan and its founder in February 2009 for the same newspaper. Now, there wasn't really a hard news hook then either, but she had a couple of things going for her: she was covering a convention of people who start memes (so at least there was that hook); her writing is light and informative (there's more information in that story than in today's) ;and the story ran in the Style section, which is by definition a place for quirky features.
Today's story, which as far as I can tell adds nothing to the story the Post ran over a year ago, adds nothing new. It's really just a discussion of 4chan gaming Google search trends, which it did months ago.
I get that a lot of Post readers don't know what 4chan is -- I was hanging out with a bunch of 20 somethings the other night and a couple of people in this Internet-savvy bunch didn't know--but running this story on A1, just makes the Post look like a giant luddite.
So why did the story run A1? I have no idea.
But this is the best part. Had the editors and the San Francisco-based technology reporter been a little more in tune with the pulse of the internet, they would have found a news hook.
At about 9 p.m. yesterday, The Smoking Gun, posted a transcript of the 4chan's founder's testimony in the trial of the guy who hacked into Sarah Palin's e-mail during the presidential election. The trial concluded at the end of April, but the testimony had never been seen before.
The Post doesn't mention the transcript at all.
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| Comic via xkcd. I know that this is a serious topic, but I couldn't think of a better way to illustrate this post. |
It's likely that it often becomes a dangerous shortcut as a reporter runs with a sexy story and the details are enough that readers stop seeing the "allegedly" and just assume the person in question actually committed the crime. But it's something.
I don't know what the New York Times' policy is on the word, but it certainly could have been used more liberally in their coverage of a fire on Staten Island. Last Thursday, a fire in Staten Island killed a family--two sons, two daughters, and a mother. Investigators quickly determined that the victims were murdered: some of them had their throats slit, and the fire was set intentionally.
They also said that they thought that one of the sons, a 14 year old, was the murderer. That (likely false) theory emerged only hours after the fire.
But now it seems likely the investigators were wrong. Autopsies show the boy died may have died from his slit throat before the fire was started. Investigators are now focused on the mother, while not ruling out the boy's involvement.
The first story that the New York Times wrote liberally relied on variations of the phrase "investigators said" but the reporters also had already drawn the lines between good and evil.
As a single mother in a terrible job market, Leisa Jones had been doing everything she could to hold things together, working part time as a department store security guard during the holidays and, more recently, attending beauty school. Her neighbors said she had made the second-floor apartment on Staten Island where she lived with her four children — two boys and two girls — a place where good manners and good behavior mattered.
On Thursday, after firefighters had picked through the ruins of what they initially believed had been an early-morning fire that killed Ms. Jones and all four children, they uncovered evidence that was even more troubling: Ms. Jones's oldest child...had apparently started the blaze after slitting his sisters' throats.
Those first two grafs are hard to walk back from (which is why I substituted the boy's name for an ellipses). They paint the story of a mother was just a hard working single mother, the hero of everyday life, and of a son who killed his family. "Apparently" does not begin to convey the shakiness of what may end up being a completely false narrative.
The initial story was followed up with a story based on interviews with people who knew the family: the boy had a psychological assessment that recommended he switch schools (though why is unclear), a history of assault, had been bullied, and had been seen lighting paper on fire. If it seems like a leap to say that these were warning signs of homicide on this magnitude, it's because it is.
But that didn't stop the Times from jumping into full-on speculation on the same day:
In front of his home and at a Staten Island pool, he had apparently been lighting fires, flashes of heat and light that spoke, it turned out, of something more than just a fascination with flames. Inside, he burned.If there's any place "allegedly" should have appeared so far, it should have been in every sentence of this story. The "it would seem" can refer to "all-too-mature" so there's nothing to say that this boy's guilt is not a given. Never mind that the writer has stated "inside, he burned" as fact. And the boy isn't even alive to contest it.
The heat of that rage consumed the 14-year-old boy and left in its place, it would seem, an all-too-mature murderer.
Two days later, the Times ran this headline: Autopsies Suggest Mother, Not Son, Was Killer in Staten Island Case. The next day the writer of a the speculation column wrote a new one saying reporters were too quick to latch on to the story. But the damage might be already done.
In the age of the Internet the allegations are there for all to see. Forever. A person could follow an outdated link and never see the new stories.
A paper cannot force a reader to read all the follow up stories, but there are ways to ensure that a reader who wanders onto the old and now outdated article knows that the boy was not a frightening murderer, and that the mother allegedly killed her family. I'm not advocating for removing the stories. They absolutely should remain on the site. But the Times has the technology to update the old stories, and they should do so. The first column only links to other stories that implicate the boy; it does not link to the back-tracking column.
As it stands, the original story does not even have a link to the updated stories. The "related" articles on the bottom are all about older fires and murders. There is no "Times Topic" page about the fire. There is no "read complete coverage here."
That's the least that they could do. If I were the editor I would go even further and offer the links to the updated story in an editor's note at the top, which notes that investigators are no longer sure that the 14-year-old boy killed his family.
The Times is not violating any newspaper ethics. The paper ran the story as it believed to be true and then ran follow up stories correcting the record. The Times has run editors notes before when a source lied. But this time, the unnamed firefighters and investigators implicating a dead boy didn't lie, they just made a mistake. So technically, no correction or note is needed.
But the rules of what to correct when might be based on an assumption that a reader will always end up at the most recent story. That's true if a person is picking up a paper every day. It's not true if a reader consumes news by way of social media and following links. It's not even true if you use the Times' own search engine. A search for "Staten Island" brings up the original story implicating the boy before the newer stories (though searching for "Staten Island fire" brings up the headline "Doubts Emerge About Teenager's Role in S.I. Fire" first).
The investigators are still not ruling out the boy's involvement in the crime. But an editor's note could establish that his guilt has been called into question, and things are not as clear as the article made it seem.
A while back, I marveled at an iPad magazine that was constantly updated with the most recent data. I said that I expected the way that news was saved would change and that readers could expect that old coverage would remain up-to-date. I can't think of a better way to use that technology than to clear a person's name of a crime.
Especially a boy who cannot clear his own name.
I'm not really a broadcast news kind of person; I read the newspaper--some on print and some online-- and I listen to NPR. But every once and a while I end up watching the 11 o'clock local news. One of those once-in-a-whiles was the night before the nuclear summit.
I was watching a television show, and the teasers for the news kept repeating "How will road closings for the nuclear summit affect your morning commute? Find out at 11."
"Excellent," I thought, as I listened to a stream of motorcades go past the window, "I would love to know if it will affect my morning commute."
So, I stayed by the television to find out. I didn't even get a map of road closures. I got man on the street interviews with person after person who got to tell the television audience how they thought the road closures would affect their own personal commutes.
First of all, viewers were not informed of where these random people lived or worked so there was no way to draw connections from their experiences to my own. Second of all, these interviews were not live; they were filmed before the road closures began, so the men and women being interviewed were guessing. Hello random person I don't know why YES I want to know whether you think it's annoying that the roads are closed. Oh, wait. I don't. I certainly don't want your inexpert opinions on whether the road closures are necessary in place of actual information about what the road closures are and how they will affect my morning.
In the end, I logged onto WPost.com and found a map there.
Anyway, this is all old news. I had actually forgotten about this particular annoyance until I came across this xkcd comic:
Bonus: Here is an interview with a guy who basically makes it his job to get quoted as a man-on-the-street as often as possible. Most recently, he was first in line to get the iPad, and all sorts of news outlets and blogs dutifully reported it, though many have caught on to his antics. Back in 2003, the AP warned reporters about quoting him.
I was watching a television show, and the teasers for the news kept repeating "How will road closings for the nuclear summit affect your morning commute? Find out at 11."
"Excellent," I thought, as I listened to a stream of motorcades go past the window, "I would love to know if it will affect my morning commute."
So, I stayed by the television to find out. I didn't even get a map of road closures. I got man on the street interviews with person after person who got to tell the television audience how they thought the road closures would affect their own personal commutes.
First of all, viewers were not informed of where these random people lived or worked so there was no way to draw connections from their experiences to my own. Second of all, these interviews were not live; they were filmed before the road closures began, so the men and women being interviewed were guessing. Hello random person I don't know why YES I want to know whether you think it's annoying that the roads are closed. Oh, wait. I don't. I certainly don't want your inexpert opinions on whether the road closures are necessary in place of actual information about what the road closures are and how they will affect my morning.
In the end, I logged onto WPost.com and found a map there.
Anyway, this is all old news. I had actually forgotten about this particular annoyance until I came across this xkcd comic:
The hover text on the comic is equally delightful:
News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who, seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones.Comparing any news source to the Titanic makes me gloomy, but I certainly agree with the sentiment.
Bonus: Here is an interview with a guy who basically makes it his job to get quoted as a man-on-the-street as often as possible. Most recently, he was first in line to get the iPad, and all sorts of news outlets and blogs dutifully reported it, though many have caught on to his antics. Back in 2003, the AP warned reporters about quoting him.
My confusion about Twitter is, in some ways, like my confusion about the iPad. I understand what to do with it and how to do it, but I don't understand the point. But for Twitter the problem is also related to my work's pretty strict policy about social media that can be traced back to the publication. So, while my Gchat status messages are often witty (or so I'm told), I'm not keen to broadcast them into the ether of the Internet on a site where I would need to follow professional contacts as well as friends. So for now, I'm solely a consumer of tweets.
Which brings me to my real problem with Twitter: I sound like an idiot when I talk about it. The other day, I was complaining to a friend about a tweet that had offered misleading information. I stopped my self half way through the sentence, because using the words "tweeted" "hashtag" and "handle" and "tweet" in one sentence makes me sound like I am using some middle school code, not talking about actual media that is being archived by the Library of Congress.
And by the way, the vocabulary for Facebook is not much better. Come to think of it, the verb "to blog" is stupid-sounding too.
So, yes, I am all for Slate's campaign to develop a new vocabulary even though I suspect it's too late to change very much. (Also, I plan on never using phrases like twitterverse or tweeple. Yeesh).
Image from the Twitter Status Generator.
The most recent one doesn't actually apologize, but the game is still there. Here's samples from today, 2007, and 2006 respectively:
- The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex.
- Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends. ...But we missed the right balance.
- We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings — to give you even more control over who you share your information with.Somehow we missed this point with News Feed and Mini-Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away.
So when exactly were they hearing something other than people wanting more control over privacy settings?
Remember when Facebook looked like that image above?
Plenty of people have complained about the privacy issues with facebook and its advertisers, I am just going to complain about the advertisers themselves.
How about not only marketing it to women? Does that help?
Here ends today's rant.
