Yesterday’s discussion about fake news was long, but not quite long enough. For one, it didn’t really address how to fix it, which is a whole different issue. (In short, cut off their ad dollars.)
Anyway, over in the UK there are two groups who have long dealt with some form of fake news, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) and the Advertising Standards Authority. Together they serve to distinguish between fact and fiction, and hold journalists and advertisers accountable for their work. That’s what they’re supposed to do anyway.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work as well as it should. Case in point- Ipso recently ruled an outrageously wrong piece by James Delingpole about ocean acidification to be acceptable, mainly because “the article was clearly a comment piece.” This is a poor excuse for a piece that, according to Professor Phil Williamson, who lodged the complaint, “Almost everything that could be scientifically wrong with Delingpole’s article was wrong.”
On the other hand, in response to a fracking company’s complaint, the Advertising Standards Authority instructed the UK Friends of the Earth not to make certain definitive claims about fracking’s health and safety threat “in the absence of adequate evidence.”
Any comparison of the two texts makes it clear that Delingpole’s opinion contains far more misleading information than FoE’s pamphlet about fracking. But since no one is going to mistake Delingpole for being fact-based, he gets a free pass. But FoE’s generally true but not well cited piece is held to a higher standard, since it’s presented as fact and not opinion.
But is this fair? Probably not. Could FoE been more careful and addressed the risks of health impacts instead of making declarative statements? Sure. But that doesn’t mean they were more wrong than Delingpole.
So the situation here is odd, to say the least. Fact-based communications that stray even slightly from the most careful language is not allowed, but writing that is egregiously wrong is permitted if you disguise lies as opinion.
This makes a mockery of the Ipso’s intent to uphold journalistic ethics. If your writing appears in a newspaper and not a fiction novel, it should be held to some basic standard of accuracy.
Unless, apparently, you’re James Delingpole. Then you’re such an atrociously, aggressively incorrect blowhard that no one will ever mistake you for anything but a pompous no-talent hack.
But that’s just our opinion… And apparently, Ipso’s.
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