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Huffington Post proves newspapers aren't dead, yet.
Are you getting all your news on the Internet? Constantly cruising a mix of major and minor media sites, or sucking them all in at once through an aggregator like Google News? Pointing fingers at blogs, Amazon's Kindle, Google News and Youtube has become a popular habit of once healthy -- and now hurting -- newspapers and broadcast outlets both great and small. even Twitter fell complicit, with both @huffingtonpost and @Alyssa_Milano tweeting it to nearly 200k followers each, both without a hint of retraction.
Mistakes do happen, and no one is saying that major media gets it right 100% of the time -- or prints retractions and corrections in the same size font point and weight as the stories they seek to correct. But, it's near certain that 5 year old incorrectly attributed footage wouldn't still be airing on any national news service -- 12 hours after it was first run.
This would be different if we were discussing any third tier blog running in the streets with a wildly incorrect and unvetted story -- heck, Newsmax and Michelle Malkin practically invented that strategy. But this is Huffington Post -- the number one blog in the world according to Technorati, and an oft-cited source in the old media universe. Pitiful.
So, still ready to write off all of those old media institutions of the Fourth Estate and pin the murder on teh Intarwebs?
Update 2:42am: HuffPo has removed the video as of a little after 2am EST. The original YouTube video in the post was here. Still no response from Huffington Post, and no public mention of the incident.
Comments
20
Subscribe to commentsSaint SeminoleSep 30th 2009 11:50PM
Keep in mind that newspapers, in their infancy, weren't known for accuracy or truthfulness (not even by today's standards).
It took many decades for their owners to (1) realize how important trust is, and (2) to build up that trust over time, through accuracy and professionalism.
TV has been the same way, and yet hasn't even gotten there yet (especially local-level broadcasts). Blogs & internet news sites (even those associated with print newspapers) have barely been born, relatively speaking.
It might take years, but readers will eventually weed out the ones known for making these kinds of mistakes and stick to the more accurate ones (at least I hope so).
YunOct 1st 2009 2:34AM
Yes, blogs make silly little mistakes like this. Leave it up the to "real" news, though, to make the serious mistakes or, more often, full-on omissions of what the real news is. This is already well documented and no doubt one reason why they are failing while blogs are thriving. I won't mind seeing them go. They're merely another arm of the "Big 5" corporations anyways. It's not like some local office of hard-boiled investigative reports is going away.
Marty K.Oct 1st 2009 2:38AM
Anyone else think it ironic that criticism of the accuracy of blog journalism in the blogosphere, citing the specific example of a Huffington Post article, is coming from WITHIN the blogosphere? I think it's doubly amusing that this criticism is coming from what is essentially an entertainment blog, making it the internet equivalent of, say, Showbiz Tonight criticizing 60 Minutes.
Grant RobertsonOct 1st 2009 2:55AM
We're not an entertainment blog, although I'm flattered that you find us entertaining. We cover the digital lifestyle -- lifestreaming, blogging, software, downloads, web apps, operating systems, casual games and a healthy dose of op-ed from a really talented team of writers all over the world. Blogs vs. Journalism is a pretty valid topic, especially when it involves spreading via Twitter and YouTube.
And for the record; I'm a blogger, not a journalist. I have a ton of respect for journalists, and I also have a degree in English. Neither of those two things makes me qualified to take a fully neutral PoV, and I don't claim to.
In this case? My bias is toward blogs getting things right. Especially when they're easy things to get right. Secreting the video away in the middle of the night and never mentioning it again is what you did to a pregnant teenager in the 1950s, not what you do to a faked YouTube video that caught you off guard and which you never bothered to check out.
This kind of thing, you get out in front of. You say:
"Oops, that was rubbish. Sorry. Joe here is kinda new, and his editor didn't look at it. Joe and his editor are being retrained and we promise to redouble our efforts to check out random internet video before we call it something it isn't. We owe you a little better than that, and we *are* better than that. Thanks for reading."
See, that's the end of something like this. You don't regain credibility by hiding mistakes, you regain credibility by openly admitting your mistakes, correcting them, and then correcting any methods or processes which made the mistake possible.
Marty K.Oct 1st 2009 5:17AM
Grant,
I'm not disagreeing with anything in your reply. As a fellow blogger (and English degree holder), I believe that news blogs should maintain the same level of accuracy, accountability and ethics as "traditional media." They are providing news to the populace, after all.
The point of my previous comment was simply to point out the ironly of a blog like Download Squad criticizing the Huffington Post for factual inaccuracies and not necessarily get into the bigger issue of journaistic ethics and procedure.
When I referred to Download Squad as "essentially an entertainment blog," I only meant that, relative to a venerable news blog like the Huffington Post, you are. But so is every other non-news blog in my opinion, since I'm a hopeless news junkie. Ironically, though, I stick with the New York Times and MSNBC, but do not read the Huffington Post.
I enjoy your blog and pop in on a daily basis. It cycles in and out of Chromium's top 8. Keep up the good work.
Marty K.Oct 1st 2009 5:21AM
And sorry about the typos. 'AutoCheck Spelling' in Gedit apparently doesn't stay enabled when you open a new tab.
giantenemycrabOct 1st 2009 3:03AM
Isn't this a bit harsh? I mean, they just made a mistake. Like you said, print isn't any different. I don't see why this means they have no journalistic credibility and have been "on the Internet 12 hours too long [and] is 5 years too old." This seems more like an opinionated writer waiting for a chance to lash out at The Huffington Post and finally found an excuse.
Wesley WOct 1st 2009 3:27AM
Thanks to "blog journalism," news is no longer simply reported - it becomes fodder for commentary. It's no longer news in the traditional sense (fact *and* matter-of-fact based) - it's sensationalized, filtered, opined on, and manipulated. Yes, the newspaper industry blazed a trail and from that evolution we have accurate and truthful news reporting, but it's a trail that does not need blazing again. The concept and conceit of blogging, and particularly blog journalism, isn't original or new.
I can barely stand to read much more than headlines from cnn.com or foxnews.com because I don't want my news pre-chewed, like what the Huffington Post puts out (in large part).
Some people enjoy that, and I think that's great. I actually don't think there is anything wrong with this form of journalism, but it's often reckless and it certainly isn't "news." It is from that point of view that I can see nothing wrong or "pitiful" with the mistake the HuffPo made. Sure, a little recognition for an embarrassing mistake is in order and I don't think anyone would argue that point, but we can't compare true journalism, and the standards it's held to, to what the HuffPo puts out. Blogs are all still blogs, whether it's my grandma's family blog, my little brother's MySpace page, or the Huffington Post.
There is indeed still a need for true, classical journalism. Blog journalism and the Huffington Post is not it, and it's not fair to hold it to the same journalistic standard.
RocketboyOct 1st 2009 8:28AM
Well, it could have been worse. You know, like doing a whole news story right before an election based on forged documents and other false statements (that there was doubt to being with).
Or they could have said it was sad to look at the victims because they were so brown, and so poor.
Posting an old you-tube video is quite small on the whoopsie scale.
But Huffpo should have acknowledged their flub.
Eh, what can you expect from a blog that has on problems with allowing people to post dangerous anti-vax information?
RocketboyOct 2nd 2009 11:50AM
Oh, and here's a link of Huffpo dispensing dangerous advice...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/swine-flu-what-to-do_b_286245.html
ronmosesOct 1st 2009 9:07AM
I think this says far more about HuffPo specifically than it does about the blogosphere in general. Don't forget, these are the same folks who are actively campaigning against the arrest of a fugitive child rapist; they're not exactly a shining example of the best the Internet has to offer.
And to suggest that this one incident casts the blogosphere at large as somehow factually inferior to the major media, when the former has done so much over the past few years to keep people informed while the latter has done everything in its power to keep them ignorant, is plainly absurd.
Newspapers aren't dead yet, but HuffPo has very little to do with demonstrating that.
Ken HawkinsOct 1st 2009 9:53AM
The huffington post is a pretty far cry from a "blog."
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:blog
And, look, the medium has nothing to do with accuracy and accountability. There are many Web site far more reliable than newspapers, and the inverse is true.
As a newspaper vet who now runs a webpaper, I wholly agree with commenter #1 Saint Seminole.
Fun reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
Grant RobertsonOct 1st 2009 12:59PM
See, I can't understand how you can make the argument that HuffPo isn't a blog. They even use the term blog on the front page, right in the header.
And I'll trade you a fun reading link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
"The medium is the message is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. "
khawkOct 1st 2009 1:34PM
I think the HuffPo is just as wrong to call themselves a blog -- it's a term rooted in the concept of one or few people writing about one or a few topics -- often relying on opinion.
The HuffPo bares hardly any resemblance to that notion. In spite of the fact it is often an aggregate of other reporting, it is far more similar to a national media site.
It's just that the HuffPo is a pretty unreliable, yellow site.
(Personally, I have very little love for the HuffPo. I think it hurts the reputation of all other online media publishers.)
And, regarding mediums. Here's some fun food for thought: Books are all pretty similar. But the possibilities online are so infinite that many sites are hardly similar.
I'd argue the Web itself transcends being any one medium.
YouTube.com, nytimes.com, wikipedia.org, facebook.com: Are these sites similar at all?
The medium online could be defined by the interface/presentation style.
Under such a theory, your link holds more truth.
Sites designed like a standard "blog" will inherently be more opinion oriented. Those designed like newspaper sites will be more "newspapery," social media will be more social.
The same is true in the physical world for magazine, tabloids, weekly papers, tabs, and broadsheet newspapers.
DeadlYRageOct 1st 2009 1:30PM
More left wing garbage. Should be called opinion paper.
Andrew Y.Oct 1st 2009 3:49PM
You're criticism of Huffington Post wouldn't have anything to do with your political bias, would it?
The reason I'm asking (rhetorically) is because you are nuts if you somehow think that what you consider "real" news organizations don't print inaccuracies or distortions without retraction or correction.
The Times, for example, has been shown to take articles that first appeared in an overseas newspaper source, reprint the article, but hack out over two thirds of the words, changing the entire meaning of the original piece, before presenting it to American readers.
This is usually done to remove all references to the United State's that might reflect a more accurate representation of its involvement in the situation before distributing it to an American population that, like yourself, loves to trash independent media but laps up establishment biased quasi-reporting from the corporate media like a starving stray dog.
That's disingenuous distortion of the truth. And it is never apologized for.
One only need look at the documentation of sites such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Media Matters, Fact Check.org to discover the MASSIVE amount of inaccurate or sloppy journalism done by mainstream print and television media that goes unaddressed and unapologized for.
It is debatable whether or not you would consider FOX News or the now Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal to be actual "news" sources, but if you do (since one is print,) the documentation of both organization's gross inaccuracies, mistakes, distortions or reporting of 100% factually incorrect information has been well documented by both left-leaning AND non-partisan media accountability sources.
When you want to read sanitized "news" as seen through the lens of huge corporations and their interest in greater economic power and profit and their total disconnection from labor and the American working class - by all means, go spend fifty cents and read the New York Times.
Heck, I read the New York Times. But acting as though there is a huge gap between the accuracy and objectivity of the Times and well-established internet journalism websites is embarrassingly naive.
Your rant sounds fairly silly in light of the fact that our print news is wholly corporate owned and regularly manipulates and/or sanitizes its reporting to protect and reflect the interests the wealthy and its privileged shareholders.
Kind of makes a wrong youtube video seem like not that big of a deal, doesn't it?
Grant RobertsonOct 1st 2009 2:16PM
Andrew,
You're way off base. My fiancee and I often joke that we're only slightly to the right of Marx and Castro -- although that's a *gross* exaggeration. I'm definitely pretty far left, and I have a very deep understanding of the spectrum, not just from a U.S. centric view of left and right, but from a world view of the gamut.
I'm most certainly a Volvo driving, latte sipping, DSCC contributing, ACLU supporting, New York Times reading, NPR member station loving intellectual who votes for and believes in the left. And, for the record, I'm damned proud of it.
My issue isn't with HuffPo's politics, not in the slightest. My issue is that half-cocked traffic baiting posts like the one being debated here serve to devalue the often great work that other HuffPo contributors make. Of course, if it weren't for the link-baiting sensationalism, they likely wouldn't be number one, they would more likely be in a dead heat with sites like Politico, Kos, and Talking Points Memo.
Andrew Y.Oct 1st 2009 3:56PM
Grant,
I accept everything you are saying - but you focused on my first sentence (which I should have omitted anyway) and ignored everything else.
We have a problem with accuracy and accountability in ALL media, and Huffington Post is not better or worse than the rest of our mainstream news sources. It's just different. While the NYTs probably wouldn't mistakenly post a 5 year old youtube video, it certainly has done more than its fair share to distort information to fit is own privileged worldview. As have most other for-profit corporate news sources.
It's almost unavoidable.
Grant RobertsonOct 1st 2009 4:20PM
Sure, true neutral point of view is probably unattainable. A pure form of anything is rarely attainable, such is the curse of being human.
What's completely avoidable however, is failing to publish a correction. That's the chief issue here, the penultimate issue being the avoidance of a factually incorrect post altogether. I think it's a straw man argument to point at other instances of journalistic failure as a justification for continuing disintegration.
With the exponentially increased speed in which information spreads, the effort required to unearth a falsehood has declined as well. A minute or two of vetting -- likely without leaving YouTube, and consuming less time than it took to copy and paste the embed markup -- HuffPo could have avoided the error altogether. I don't understand -- and I don't think I ever will -- any argument which supports that brand of indolence as excusable.
sitrucOct 2nd 2009 2:14AM
I found the source of the criticisms to be the best part.