Editor and Publisher reports on a survey of reporters. There are quite a few interesting things in the report, but E&P leads with the statistic that 70% or reporters have been accused of bias in the past year. Pretty stunning? Not really. Being accused of bias is pretty normal these days for anyone writing in any medium. The majority of those surveyed lay a lot of blame on poor editing, not on themselves. There is one issue though, 'waaaay down the page that should have been the lead, I think.
One third of the respondents report that they discovered that they had published false information. They blamed it on sources lying to them.
I think that figure is very high indeed and points to a major problem. I do not for one second believe that information from anonymous sources is always accurate, and this tends to agree with that. 31% report finding a source was lying to them. The poll sampled newspaper reporters, by the way. Do you think the error rate is lower in television news? I don't.
This is a good thing to keep in mind when reading the news, isn't it?
Pingback: Blogmeister USA