farmdoc's blog post number 349

When I was a nipper I thought the purpose of newspapers was to disseminate news. Only when I was much older did I realise their true purpose was, is, to sell advertising to maximise profit. In recent years and probably longer, newspapers have become less concerned with the truth. If they ever employed many fact-checkers, I doubt they do today. So they publish factual errors. Most errors probably go unnoticed; but when one’s picked up, the newspaper may run an inconspicuous retraction. Then it goes on its merry way, unrepentant because sensational but wrong articles sell papers, but retractions don’t. I was sensitised to this issue when I was Save Albert Park’s media spokesman. And I was reminded of it last Thursday by this article in the online Jerusalem Post, according to which the New York Times published (after the story had been discredited) an erroneous article, on its front page ‘above the fold’. But the subsequent retraction was on page four. I think a retraction should occupy the same space, and be as equally prominent as, the erroneous article. If newspapers were ethically responsible, this would happen. But they aren’t, so it won’t. Robert F Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, said: ‘There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?’. So maybe one day…