The Stone Walls

Confederate Yankee has been asking the folks at Editor and Publisher for an explanation of Greg Mitchell's apparent rewrite of an old story. He has been getting nothing at all in response. I don't really think it is all that unusual for the media to have a raging double standard in operation these days, sadly. After all, the New York Times demands accountability of the administration but lets Bill Keller lie to readers with impunity.

Over the course of the week, various bloggers have attempted to contact Mr. Mitchell and other figures inside both Editor & Publisher and its parent company, VNU Media, about this journalistic fraud, and neither publisher Charles McKeown of Editor & Publisher, nor VNU Media's company spokesman Will Thoretz has had enough courtesy, professionalism, or even concern about the reputation about the craft they are supposed to represent to respond to those asking very serious questions about a very real breach in ethics apparently committed by one of their senior staff members.

Media organizations have essentially two ways with which they can deal with situations of journalistic fraud as noted by Dr. David Perlmutter recently and ironically enough, in this editorial in Editor & Publisher about a similar journalistic scandal:

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don’t delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

I suspect it will be a long while before we hear any explanation from behind those stone walls at E&P or the NYT.