Adam WeinsteinWhat an awful week for journalism, all around.
The worst was undoubtedly the loss Thursday night of New York Times media reporter par excellence David Carr, who died at 58. Beyond his reputation for endless warmth, sincerity, and mentorship for generations of journos, Carr was singularly fearless in reporting, re-reporting, turning every stone over, and calling out BS wherever he saw it.
We owe it to Carr to call out lazy journalism. And brother, there’s plenty of it these days.
The Senator, the blog, and the propaganda machine: Few informed readers were in danger of taking the Washington Free Beacon, a blog for youthful conservatives founded by Bill Kristol‘s son-in-law, seriously before this week. Even fewer are in such danger now, after it got caught running bogus PR for Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla) and attempting to pass it off as “exclusive” reporting.
On Thursday afternoon, the Beacon published “exclusive” photos, provided by Inhofe’s office, purporting to show Russian atrocities in Ukraine — proof, Inhofe argued, that the U.S. should pass his bill approving deeper intervention on the Ukrainians’ behalf. Inhofe “obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos,” the story said. But neither the senator nor the Beacon apparently did a Google search for the images, otherwise they would have found that nearly half of them came from AP and AFP file photos of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008.
A spokeswoman for Inhofe blamed the Ukrainian delegation that provided it with the bogus photos, but didn’t explain how the senator’s “independent verification process” also failed. And the Beacon, confronted with its shoddy stenography, added a note to the “scoop” saying that “serious questions have been raised” about its accuracy. Perhaps if it had performed an act of journalism and raised those questions before hitting “publish,” it could have spared itself some embarrassment… and snagged an even better story.
Meanwhile, back in Florida, carrying water for traffic-camera contractors: The Sun-Sentinel editorial board is pretty good at trolling, all the way back to its endorsement of Mitt Romney in 2012. But nothing holds a candle to its Friday column defending red-light cameras and the companies that exploit them for fun and profit.
“These cameras are changing behaviors and helping save lives. The numbers show it,” the editorial states, before citing a three-year-old figure from a group run by the insurance industry — a group that defines and counts “accidents” very creatively … which is probably why more honest reports show that rear-end accidents actually go UP after the cameras are installed.
The Sentinel’s trolling doesn’t stop there. In an attempt to gain reader sympathy for the camera ticketing system used in Boca Raton, it cites only one “fact”: “Since the program launched in May 2012, daily violations for red-light running have dropped more than 80 percent, according to Kate Coulson, spokeswoman for the vendor, American Traffic Solutions.”
That’s right: We have to keep the lucrative camera-ticketing system in place because the third-party that operates the lucrative camera-ticketing system says it works. Never mind that violations may have dropped because the cameras aren’t reliable for catching red-light runners, or because there were never that many red-light runners in the first place. And never mind that violations have little to do with crashes or injuries.
Typically, the local newspaper is supposed to be a bulwark against government and corporate abuse of the little guy. But in this case, there’s a ridiculous inversion: The state courts have consistently ruled that red-light cameras screw state motorists for no better reason than to generate profits. And the Sun-Sentinel is defending the profiteers, with “stats” provided by — who else? — the profiteers. Shame on them.
