{"id":654,"date":"2011-03-22T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T03:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dilworth2lead.com\/blogpol\/?p=654"},"modified":"2026-03-19T09:49:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:49:39","slug":"bogus-logic-used-to-justify-lazy-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/bogus-logic-used-to-justify-lazy-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Bogus Logic Used to Justify Lazy Reporting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newspaper writers and editors often defend incompetent reporting with pernicious<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span> logic — “Both sides were angry so I must have written a fair article.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Publishing gibberish would also anger both sides of any controversial issue; and that takes no effort at all; a reporter wouldn’t even need to show up at the meeting and fall asleep.<\/p>\n

A Richard Dawkins observation fits perfectly here —<\/p>\n

“…when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1989 Time magazine’s Laurence Barrett wrote an exceptional article coining the term “Insider’s Lament” meaning – “on subjects I’m personally involved in, you guys often get it wrong.”<\/a><\/p>\n

As a responsible reporter Laurence reluctantly learned that “journalism” at our national level does not always care about reporting accurately.<\/p>\n

Having attended thousands of local governmental meetings and reviewed the news reports afterward, Inot only agree, I’m now more astonished when a Monterey Peninsula<\/strong> reporter gets it right<\/i><\/strong><\/u> than when they get it wrong.<\/p>\n

Barrett’s article concludes –<\/p>\n

“More broadly, if too many news organizations neglect to check their facts, how long before the Insider’s Lament becomes everyone’s? In a business whose cardinal asset is credibility, that notion should be unsettling.”<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lazy reporters and editors breach their large responsibility to our community. Genuine reporting involves listening and understanding the subject. Accurately reporting what each of two (or more) sides say is not hard, but it takes actual work.<\/p>\n

____________________<\/center>
<\/center>
Notes:<\/center>
““Insider’s Lament”<\/a> by Laurcnce Barrett<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newspaper writers and editors often defend incompetent reporting with pernicious logic — “Both sides were angry so I must have written a fair article.” Publishing gibberish would also anger both sides of any controversial issue; and that takes no effort … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9590,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/9590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}