Don’t believe everything you read…
Or to put it more bluntly, if Rolling Stone can get it wrong, what makes you so sure what’s on Fox News is correct?
In the information age, we’ve got plenty of gossip, a lot of rabble-rousing, but truth can be hard to find. Because not everyone wants to go on the record, because people shade the story to their advantage, because reporters want to become famous.
HUH?
Go back to Judith Miller. If she hadn’t been writing in the New York Times would liberals have voted for an Iraq invasion? A lot fewer, that’s for sure. People trusted the Times.
And we used to trust Rolling Stone.
The biggest story today is the Viacom write-down. How long did we have to hear that MTV raped the music industry? But all these years later, MTV has few salable assets and the record companies have catalogs that will seemingly never expire, and the acts built upon MTV’s base are still touring to this day. Would anybody in the U.S. want to see Culture Club otherwise? But few employ the long perspective. Because we live in an immediate gratification culture where how you look is more important than who you are. Lease a mansion and a sports car and people will think you’re rich when the truth is your bank account is empty and you’re two months from bankruptcy while the person driving a Chevy and paying down his mortgage is prepared for retirement. Then again, you never thought you’d live that long.
I never thought I’d live so long that Rolling Stone would have no fold, never mind be shrunk down to the size of other magazines. Rolling Stone was a paragon of music news, both criticism and in-depth reportage, and it made its bones on the back of the Patty Hearst story, which it got first. That’s why they made that movie “Perfect.” Suddenly our media won.
But now it’s lost.
Because the writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, wanted to be a star.
That’s the story here. Not that Rolling Stone didn’t exhibit enough skepticism, although with Matt Taibbi off on what turned out to be a brief hejira in the online world they needed someone new they could hang their reputation on.
Turns out Erdely blew it up.
At least Rolling Stone has a fact-checking apparatus, unlike so many publications. But when a writer hears something too good to be true, he never prints it without hearing it from another source, because of the spin.
That’s right, people have an agenda. That’s why famous people talk to the press, to get their viewpoint across. And sure, there are mentally ill persons like alleged rape victim Jackie telling fibs, and everybody wants to be nationally known, but if your business is telling the story, you’ve got to get it right.
The main culprit here is Erdely’s methodology.
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She had a precept, all she needed was to fill in the details. Campuses are a hotbed of rape, fraternities are bad, and if we just reveal these details there will be change. But this is not how a reporter does her job.
A reporter might have the outlines of a concept, and then she fleshes out the details and finds out if she has a story. Which she might not. Or which might be different from what she first believed.
I’m telling you now, not every CEO is a crook. Not every politician has done heinous things. Sometimes you find out the people you hate are actually nice, when you get to know them. But most people never get access.
What if Ms. Erdely had hung with the frat brothers?
Would she have written the same story? Would she have found out that all of them were Neanderthals? But she didn’t do this, it would mess with her world vision. Everybody’s fearful the facts will get in the way of their vision.
Like the fact that Obamacare is working. The right wing hates this, so they just state that it isn’t.
Kind of like bilingual education. Sounded good to liberals, but the truth is its efficacy is weak at best.
Life is about the middle. The gray. And we trust our news sources to suss out the truth and bring us together.
But Rolling Stone pushed us apart. And now publisher Jann Wenner says no one is going to lose their job.
WHAT?
Kill someone and you go to jail. Cheat and you get expelled from college. Perpetrate a myth that hurts real people and it’s business as usual?
OF COURSE ERDELY SHOULD LOSE HER JOB!
Judith Miller did.
Just because you admit you’re wrong, have an outside source investigate you, just because you go the extra mile that others will not, that does not absolve you of responsibility.
We’ve got to show people that not only are we correcting processes, we’re correcting behavior of individuals. If Erdely doesn’t lose her job, why should anyone else at Rolling Stone be afraid, why should anyone else worry about getting it right?
Tony Wilson taught me a lesson. You remember Anthony, the star of not only 24 Hour Party People…Well, Tony started off in television news. And one night the anchor read the football scores wrong. He blamed Tony, the researcher. Tony blamed the anchor. But the boss believed the anchor, and he told Tony he should fire him, but he was going to give him one more chance. Why? Not because anybody really cares about the football scores, they fade away in a day, but because if they can’t get the football scores right, viewers won’t believe they can get the big stories right, like war and diplomacy.
I’ve got no faith that Rolling Stone can get the big stories right.
Because they had the 21st century reaction. They apologized and went to intellectual rehab where there were no consequences. But what about the frat brothers, what about UVA? But that’s collateral damage, the institution must live on.
Like the aforementioned Fox News, which rips reputations willy-nilly and perpetrates a false viewpoint all in the name of right wing demagoguery. Bill O’Reilly can never lose his job, his ratings are too high. But at least NBC’s Brian Williams got suspended, as he should have, because the news isn’t about stardom, but TRUSTWORTHINESS!
Who do we trust in the digital age?
Not Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He just wants your private information to sell to advertisers.
Amazon specializes in putting competitors out of business, they’re no different from a pitcher who puts tar on the ball.
And Google competes with Apple by giving away its main product, its mobile operating system, for free.
And Steve Jobs illegally rigged the employment system, preventing job mobility via agreement with Apple’s competitors not to poach.
And how do we know all this?
THE NEWS!
Brad Stone‘s Amazon book is an account to be read by all.
The rest comes out in the paper. Pros dedicated to the truth more than fame.
But they’re rarely rich. And we keep on hearing that the newspapers are toast. And no one takes a long view.
And the truth is BuzzFeed is MTV.
All those online news services of the moment, they’re gonna burn out, there’s nothing there. No reporting, only stealing.
At the end of the day, real reporting survives.
Maybe not in Rolling Stone, but…
When competitors come along you don’t get down in the gutter, you climb up, you become even more of an authority. We’re hungry for facts, for truth, where are we going to get them?
Rolling Stone put a stake in its own heart.
And by not firing Erdely they’ve become laughable.
There are consequences in life, and one of them is if you screw up, you pay.
Erdely screwed up. Maybe she should never write again. Pete Rose can’t be in the MLB Hall of Fame.
But in today’s rich and famous world we circle the wagons and defend our friends. That’s the college story, the groupthink. Not only the frat brothers, but the women labeling all men as potential rapists.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Like a very few men perpetrate most of the rapes – that was in the New York Times.
But that doesn’t make headlines. Better to believe UVA is unsafe and you can get raped if you walk by the Row.
I don’t want to see any woman raped.
But I don’t want to live in an hysterical culture where good stories trump facts.
And it’s not only Rolling Stone. A scientist wanted to become famous so he falsified data and said vaccines cause autism. And now measles have returned because the so-called “educated” class has read his report and wants the best for their children. Meanwhile, no amount of data can convince them otherwise.
I don’t know what the rape situation is on campus.
But one thing I’m sure of, Rolling Stone‘s story has added to my confusion.
Just give me some truth.
lefsetz….yes it was abad article…but listen to fox news sometime…they’re
wrong 24/7 with lies and hate that make the rolling stone article look
like a childs dr. suess book.
If they banned her from writing and did the same at fox news…there’d
be no one left to give out the circus b.s. they spew on their news channel.
Its all fabricated…its all spinned…from glazes b.s. to the lies about the
Iraq war.
why don’t you talk about that b.s. lie charade….bush/cheney/rice/powell
lied thru their teeth along with nutn yahoo and killed 5000 kids and injured
250,000…where’s that lefsetz.
good luck…maybe find better material and a bigger story next time.
who cares…its a fraternity….if you remember there was lots of sex and
drinking at all those fraternities….including SAE.
get real buddy.
there’s bigger fish to fry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
p.s…..I haven’t read a rolling stone in years….the print editions are dead…
don’t youhave a computer or laptop?
Here is some truth, you are right about FOX News, they have an agenda and will bend the truth.
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-tucker-carlson-and-roger-ailes.html
What is important to note, is that there are very few viable news outlets for conservative thought (Sans blogs). I think it was PEW (In a hurry, gotta go can’t source it right now.) that reveals 75% of Americans get there news from the Main Stream Media. So while FOX may be as biased as CNN (MSNBC would be the equivalent of the Red Chinese Guards.), they are as outnumbered as a white boy at Rorke’s Drift.
Context.
not my fault conservatives can’t write. You should open your own blog.
Its the same old song chuckles…its the main stream media…
no its the ssame old republicans who lie and cheat.
Now…no steak for welfare people in Missouri.
no fortune tellers in Kansas.
Who comes up with this idiocy?
No one takes you seriously. Look at your candidates…they don’t
know policy…know nothing abou foreign affairs…the most conserrvatives
are in the south where thir schools teach at 3rd grade levels…they
don’t care about health care …..their shools have the lowest test scores
and you say theres no conservative outlets.
Ya know why….they’re too stupid to figure It out..and eple can
understand after watching fox with its tabloid style that you right
wingersv don’t get it and we don’t want to read your garbage.
maybe get some intelligent people to write or push laws….then
maybe people will take you eriously.
And please…when you bang on hillarys emails and bengazi and
the irs enforcing political laws you look like jackasses!!!!!!!
the good thing is that soon the conservative movement will eat
itself to death….we’re seeing it now…go rand…go cruz…you show
the rest of us who stupid all the rest of you are!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chuck, ever read The Christian Science Monitor? I’ve found it to be the best source for news around.
The important thing is to get your news from all sources rather than just the one which fits your ideology.
Every lie is based on a speck of truth. But you have to dig to get past the bs and fluff.
Absolutely spot on, Orphan !!!
x 10000000
Spot on.
No I have not, but I will check it out.
🙂
Ok … so you’ve got a hardon for Fox News — what’s new — that just makes you a typical liberal.
…. but to think that you could trust the information in Rolling Stone …. you must be permanently stoned.
From Yahoo, getting its news from all sources, Vox, Salon, Business Daily, and WSJ, you get a pretty good idea of the news. Unfortunately, Fox is accurate more often than it is inaccurate, but your error is counting editorials as news. All newspapers, news services, magazines, cable news, and television news shows are in competition with eachother TO SELL ADVERTISING, including Huffington.
The first bias in news is the news covered. If the editor either doesn’t assign the story or choose to cover it, it is still news, and yes the tree falling in the forest when nobody is there to here it, still makes noise. OReilly on Fox is not news. It is pure editorial. It wouldn’t be so popular if a majority of the Fox viewers didn’t
identify with it, so look at the pool of viewers, and recognize business success. There is another problem with the news. It becomes offensive when news, attempting to scoop their competition, gets facts wrong interviewing everyone in sight, making a ten minute news article into a four hour breaking news story. However, the main culprit in the news business is the word “because”. It says everything I have said before the word is and was fact, but everything I say after the word is my opinion. It then I implores you to treat both the same. I still maintain my American Standard Two Toilet Award for bi-assed reporting, and it seems that the Rolling Stone exceeded itself in failing the facts. However, it was not news. At best it was an editorial about what is happening to young women at college, and it was wrong. News would have been the police report, the who, what, where, and when of the story, all verifiable, and all simple facts, but this article was too quick to go to why. Rolling Stone has done some good news reporting, but this wasn’t a shining example, and they will be punished for allowing a political position to outweigh the facts. Perhaps the Phi Psi House at UVA will have to recruit more journalism majors to staff its new Magazine.
One final note on the overall credibility of Rolling Stone magazine.
They gave U2’s last album five stars.
‘Nuff said.
Excellent point, Orphan…
In its own way, that was equally embarrassing and bogus. And Lefsetz hammered Rolling Stone for doing it, too.
I find your hypocrisy to be overwhelming.
You point out flaws in reporting the news, and then proudly state that “Obama Care Is Working”.
Thank you for clearly stating your agenda, and misrepresenting the facts.
With reference to the Rolling Stone article, I guess the “bottom line” on such actions was best spoken over 200 years ago by that great genius of politics Talleyrand. He said of one of his boss Napoleon’s actions: “Sire, it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.” Rolling Stone has acted in a criminally irresponsible way that is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. The magazine has made it a lot harder for the victims of sexual assault, both male and female, to go for help on college campuses. The editors of the magazine did not check out its accuracy because they “knew” what frat boys were like–just like the faculty at Duke who signed that infamous letter demanding “swift justice” in the Lacrosse case “knew” what white athletes are like. To both groups of “all-knowing” individuals: I grew up hearing stories of lynch mobs in the South, and when I would raise the question of the innocence of those lynched, the white people would always say: “Oh, we know what these colored people are like.” To the editors of Rolling Stone and to the faculty at Duke: Meet your “soul mate”: David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan. Sincerely and Respectfully, Ernest Evans PS: With respect to Judith Miller and the Iraq War, I don’t think her columns were the crucial reason why a lot of liberals voted for the Iraq War. I think that the major reason why liberals supported the Iraq War was fear of having their patriotism questioned. I wrote an op-ed several months before the invasion of Iraq saying that invading Iraq was a bad idea–the only newspaper that would publish it was my hometown paper The Leavenworth Times–the rest of the print media was too scared of the “Patriotism Police” to publish such an article.