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May 14, 2006
US and UK Newspapers: One Difference
There’s one huge difference between US and UK newspapers, one that doesn’t normally get noted.
Fact Checking.
I’m quoted in this NY Times story:
Tim Worstall, a freelance economics columnist, suggested on his blog as early as 2004 that Mr. Snow get his own reality television show: "Survivor: The Cabinet Edition."
Woo, woo! A throw away joke on this blog gets picked up and used in a piece in the NYT. But that’s not what I think is the important little point, or not the one I want to make, anyway. I, like many other bloggers, have been quoted in the UK press as well (think back to 7/7 when many of us were quoted all over the place) and if something appeared on a blog then that was taken to be publication: OK, so this bloke has said this over here, we can quote it.
The NYT actually checked this quote. An email and a telephone conversation to check on what could clearly be read on the blog anyway. And several days ago at that. This rather innocuous little story (you’d have expected a UK journo to have rattled something like this off in the 30 minutes before deadline) was at least two days in the preparation.
No, I’m not quite sure what this means in a grander sense, just that there really does seem to be something of a difference between the two styles of creating a newspaper.
A couple of weeks back I approached OhMy News, thinking that we might create a UK version of that site. It’s not going to happen (for the entirely bizzare reason that I could not navigate through their telephone system to talk to them) and we’ll be launching Nightcap Syndication instead. But as part of thinking about this I was talking to Natalie Bennett who has a lot of experience working for newspapers as a sub-editor. OhMy kept asking who was going to do the fact checking of stories and when I asked Natalie how this was dealt with her reaction was "What fact checking?"
Just a different way of doing things I guess.
May 14, 2006 in Media | Permalink
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Comments
What an odd coincidence, that in spite of the fact that US papers check facts and UK papers don't, somehow US papers are less "progressive"... How utterly baffling.
Erm... actually I meant that as mere wit, or something like it, but now I'm not so sure.
Posted by: P. Froward | May 14, 2006 2:27:00 PM
Having worked in the States as a reporter, I know exactly what you mean. It is just a different way of doing things over there - they aim less to get exclusives (which will always go to TV anyway) and instead to be the paper of record.
I think it partly comes from not having lots of nationals competing against each other, and focussing more on regional stories. It's less fun... but probably more relevant to readers.
And not utterly baffling... I'd say entirely logical.
Posted by: Woffle | May 15, 2006 12:15:45 AM
Funny that you find they fact-check and the bloggers over hear actually keep track of all the stuff that the Times gets wrong. The only major paper that has a worse record on fact checking than the NY Times is the LA Times. You were lucky they actually fact checked you. They tend not to and have stupid mistakes all the time. I live in New York City and that is one of the pleasures of living here - finding all the mistakes the Times makes. Then when they print the correction it always goes on page A-17 below the fold and with a very innocuous headline.
The other thing they do is recycle stories. We heard alla bout the NSA data mining as if it were a new discovery. Turns out they had almost the same story printed 2 years ago and by the same reporter.
The one benefit of reading them online is that you no longer have to put up with their columns. That is hidden ever since so many of the columns were found to be full of crap. Now they want you to pay around $50 per year to read these crap columns. Not many people do and for a very good reason.
Posted by: dick | May 15, 2006 1:10:54 AM
Could be a symptom of a more litigious culture as well. The more likely you are to have the ass sued off you the more wary you are likely to be about potential libel suits.
It isn't a perfect system though. The glaring hole is the reporter's notes of meetings with "confidential" sources. Wasn't there that chap at the New Republic who made a career out of fantasy stories? They even made a movie about him.
RM
Posted by: The Remittance Man | May 15, 2006 8:41:02 AM
There's fact-checking and fact-checking of course. It may be apocryphal, but "We've rung the Turkish Embassy and they have no record of a miltary leader named "Saladin" ".
Posted by: dave heasman | May 15, 2006 4:47:32 PM
Dave,
Of course they'd have no record of him. He was a Kurd from Iraq.
RM
Posted by: The Remittance Man | May 15, 2006 6:50:58 PM
The main difference on the two newspaper are of course each of it focused on the news from their own country.
Posted by: paperdeals | Nov 1, 2008 11:50:38 AM
