Home / journamalism / Rotten reporting? Go with Door #3.

Rotten reporting? Go with Door #3.

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Lemieux links to a MJ piece about yet another NYT story that is turning out to be as authentic as one of CMOT Dibbler’s sausages inna bun.

Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That’s at least one big mistake too many.

Drum is very charitable. I’m considerably less so, and bad reporting irks me a great deal (as you may begin to suspect if you read on).

For one, I’m not sure the assumption that these people used anyone commonly recognized as a source is 100% safe. Maybe the NYT’s editorial policy is to accept as a source anything the reporter finds on the internet, even the most maggoty of mangoes. And that would be fine. If it were noted in the story. Plus, it would be hilarious to watch the Very Serious People who think reading the NYT shores up their VSP bona fides react when a Very Serious Story featured as sources SIG Sauer 1776 and Lev. 15:19 commenting on American Thinker.

However, if one assumes the reporters had actual sources, that’s worse. Assume that for the Clinton email crime probe story these innocents blundered onto a source who has no clue what he’s talking about but likes attention/has an axe to grind/likes trolling reporters.

And the reporters go to the next budget meeting and they’re all excited. Because they’ve got this hot story about HRC being the subject of a criminal probe. Their editor should ask for details. Such as “Who are your sources?” And the reporters should provide names and details about the sources. And the editor, while stabbing puppies with his red stylo du correction, asks how they have verified or will verify that the source (or sources) won’t make them look like morons. And so on.

That’s Act 1 (if I assume the source wasn’t someone on Facebook). Act 2 – The Story Runs. Act 3 – The Story Dissolves Like M. Le Trump’s Hair in a Rainstorm. Act 4 should have been a very unpleasant meeting in which the editor and reporters go through the who what when where why and how the hell things went so very wrong and all the parties involved wonder if they’re going to be fired.

Act 5 Should have been the reporters’ stories are subject to additional scrutiny. Maybe not “Please provide three sources and photographs to verify your assertion that the sky is blue” sort of thing, but something that would have prevented Act 6, which is basically a repeat of Act 3, only with a song and dance routine called “Now I know that you are messing with me.”

Anyone stupid and (or) unconcerned about accuracy enough to go near the same source again is running for office as a Republican, or is on the campaign staff of someone who is. Anyone unlucky enough to twice within a year accidentally stumble onto two separate horrible sources has already died in an an accident that requires the word Freak in the headlines of stories that describe it. It is absolutely not possible that mere inadvertence or sloppiness generates these little whoopsies. And so that leaves me before Door #3: Recklessly shitty lying reporters aided and abetted by reckless shitty lying editors who are all nudged-nudge, wink-winked to new heights of shittiness by a shit of an owner who is trying to make a shitty business model yield a high profit.

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