Should we be holding a report entitled "
Earn Your Own Trust, Roll Your Own Ethics: Transparency and Beyond (pdf)" by the Poynter Institute to a higher standard? Or is sloppiness par for the course for just about anything coming out of "professional" institutions these days?
It originates from the conference "Blogging, Journalism & Credibility" which caused quite a stir back in January. In fact, the report came out a little afterwards.
I have a problem with one of the lines. It goes:
As Jeff Jarvis reminds his media colleagues periodically on his Buzzmachine blog, it's foolish to do journalism without realizing that bloggers are going to fact check your ass.
This would be a valid remark if Jarvis had actually orginated the expression.
In fact it probably was Ken Layne.
Glenn Reynolds attributes it to Layne
Matt Welch quotes James Wolcott (of all people) attributing it to Layne.
And here you have Layne attributing it to himself.
So why should this matter?
If George Bush began his next speech with, "Four Score and Seven Years Ago...", would it be right for everyone to start running around saying, "As Dubya says, 'Four Score and Seven Years ago..."?
While literally true, this represents a pretty low standard of reporting. Worse, reporting like this travels fast. After all, I didn't learn of this line by reading the report. Instead, I heard it off the lips of someone who fervently believed it to be true. Indeed I was referred to the Poynter report "as proof".
It is ironic then that a work with such a title, orginating from such a conference should contain such an error. The assumption after all is that the "professionals" are the ones who get the facts straight and who, for that reason, are by definition more reliable.
It doesn't seem to me, at least in this instance, to be the case.
