If you practice journalism and don’t tell the truth, sooner or later, the lies are going to get you – into a whole lot of trouble.
Last week saw a trifecta of this type of journalistic indiscretion.
The story generating the most buzz came late in the week when The American Life xx Ira Glass retracted a piece the radio show had run in January called “Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory” on poor working conditions and other abuses at the Chinese factory that makes Apple iPads after it was discovered that Mike Daisey, the writer/monologist who did the piece, made up some of his facts.
His embellishments came to light after a reporter for the Marketplace radio show talked to Daisey’s Chinese translator, who disputed much of what Daisey had said. Glass faulted TAL’s fact checking department, which had vetting Daisey’s piece, for not doing a better job of vetting the piece before it aired – and devoted its entire program last weekend to setting the record straight.
Other media outlets continue to weigh in on Daisey’s duplicity, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and NPR’s On the Media program (which as I write this, still has 15 minutes to go and is generating a ton of online comments). It’s also caused some media critics to dig up previously published stories questioning factual errors and fictionalized material in supposedly journalist work from Malcolm Gladwell and David Sedaris.
The TAL story wasn’t the only one. Also last week, writers were talking about Jon Flatland, a long-time newsman, columnist and one-time former president of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, who was exposed for copying other writers’ humor columns for years and passing them off. According to this report from Poynter, the journalism training group, when Flatland was confronted by another humor writer about work he’d cribbed, he abruptly resigned as interim managing editor of the Times in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota and left town.
Here in Oregon, the (Portland) Oregonian last week fired long-time breaking news editor Kathleen Glanville after discovering she’d lied to the paper about the circumstances surrounding the death of the paper’s editorial page editor, Bob Caldwell, who had been a close friend. An Oregonian reporter telephoned Caldwell’s house as part of reporting this front-page story on his death and spoke to Glanville, who was there on her day off consoling his wife. Caldwell’s wife had shared with Glanville the location and circumstances of his death – in the apartment of a 23-year-old woman who had been exchanging sex acts for money for textbooks. But Glanville told the reporter that Caldwell had died in his car, a fact the paper didn’t learn until the following day when it obtained the official police report.
The Oregonian ran a clarification the following day, and Glanville took to Facebook to thank the paper for many happy years of employment and say she understood why the paper felt the need to fire her for violating journalistic ethics. “There are times in people’s lives when you have to make a decision about what is most important,” she wrote. “I am sorry that my decision — which came from love — cost me my job. I will always cherish the many people who I have worked beside for so many years.”
Why do reporters and editors lie?
I contacted Craig Silverman, who writes Poynter’s Regret the Error blog and is an authority on newspaper industry screw ups for his take on the problem.
In the case of Daisey and the Oregonian editor,”People felt their lies served a higher cause and purpose,” Silverman says. “They were able to justify their actions to themselves, so anything was fair game after that.”
Aside from that, journalists lie because everybody lies, Silverman says, whether they’re a doctor, carpenter, journalist, athlete, postal worker etc. “This doesn’t excuse it, but it means we have to do a better job of sniffing out the lies,” he says.
To better understand the situation, Silverman suggested reading this piece written by Jack Shafer, Reuters’ columnist covering politics and the press. In it, Shafer says:
I’m still waiting for somebody who got caught lying while practicing journalism to say why he did it. I have my theory: 1) They lie because they don’t have the time or talent to tell the truth, 2) they lie because think they can get away with it, and 3) they lie because they have no respect for the audience they claim to want to enlighten. That would be an ideal subject for a one-man theatrical performance.
What about you? Have you ever been tempted by deadlines or a dull source to embellish the truth? Ever made gotten away with making something up? Ever caught another reporter in a lie? Join the conversation by leaving a comment.
Oh my- I had listened to the piece about Apple computers- and wow- just swallowed everything…hook, line and sinker. Now I’m reading that it was exposed to be based on some false assumptions.
I think it is the responsibility of the reporter to double check and triple check their facts- AND the fact they are a journalist means they are ‘supposed to be’ unbiased- inotherwords, to think that the way they slant the facts will meet a great good- already shows they are going into the story with a pre set bias! Of course, all of us have our slants and our personal ideas, but in reporting I think those have to be set aside and just the facts be presented.
Many decades ago- I took several journalism classes- and wrote on the school newspaper (all seniors had to work on the school newspaper!)– we were drilled with the knowledge that every thing we printed must be factual and not have a slant! That is when I realized I would NEVER make a good journalist- because I tend to ‘sway’ my readers with my own opinions or thoughts– but I still don’t think there should be any room for fabrication.
on another note- I’m not sure that Kathleen Glanville should have been fired- should not the facts have been double checked before the story went to publication. hmmm…even though she gave false information- the writer/reporter who interviewed her should have double checked those facts.
Connie: Thanks for sharing your views. No doubt the Oregonian’s firing of Kathleen Glanville will be widely debated. By the paper’s own admission, they should have tried harder to get the official police report before publishing the first story – but they were dealing with one of their own employees, and an editor at that, and had no reason to believe she would be anything but truthful. As we know now, they were wrong. All three of these incidents are good reminders to double and triple check sources when reporting and researching stories.
Michelle R.
Michelle.
as Glanville was being treated a source, not reporting or editing the story herself (if i understand this correctly) what is your thought about her position if she had declined to answer the reporter’s question, or deflected it in some way, leaving the reporter to do his or her own search for facts?
on another aspect of the facts in any story idea: every story, it seems to me, is a distillation of fact, language, and idea. all the more reason take care with all of those, also a factor to be considered in reading, writing and editing, however.