One of the most frequent criticisms from the mainstream media about bloggers is that the MSM (with its vast resources, intensive training of reporters, and high regard for ethical principles of journalism) is better able to get the facts straight.However, one of the most important contributions of the "Blogger revolution" has been to show just how desperately weak (and rather arrogant too) that argument from the MSM has been.
I print just one of the latest examples below. Note too how quickly and comprehensively media misinformation travels, showing how traditional news organizations implicitly trust one another...especially if the story in question agrees with their preferred biases.
With a few computer keystrokes last week at my request, Jack Begg, the supervisor of newsroom research at The Times, showed me that there was no record of a Margaret B. Jones in Eugene, Ore. With a few more keystrokes, he brought up property records showing that the house Jones said she owned was bought by Margaret Seltzer and another person in 2000 and now belongs to Stuart and Gay Seltzer after an “intrafamily transaction.”
All of this should have been a huge red flag about Margaret B. Jones, the author of a memoir in which she said she was abused, taken from her family at age 5 and shuttled between foster homes for three years before winding up in a world of gangs, violence and drugs in South-Central Los Angeles.
The book, “Love and Consequences,” was a fake, and had Begg been asked to do five minutes of checking in readily available public records, or had reporters and editors done it themselves before the newspaper bit, The Times could have been spared the embarrassment of falling for yet another too-good-to-be-true memoir from a publishing industry unwilling to accept responsibility for separating fact from fiction.
By the time Begg did any checking, The Times had been taken in, as had National Public Radio, The Los Angeles Times and other news organizations. [Oprah too, poor girl.] On Feb. 26, Michiko Kakutani, the chief book reviewer of The Times, gave “Love and Consequences” a glowing notice, calling it a “remarkable book.” Though she said it had some “self-consciously novelistic” scenes, she accepted it as genuine. Two days later, in the House & Home section, Jones was profiled in her modest cottage in Eugene, where she had settled with her daughter, far from the mean streets of Los Angeles.
That’s when the fraud started unraveling...
