HammerBlog

Even though the major networks have done a rather conspicuous job of not covering the story, if John Stewart has his teeth around Climategate then I can safely assume that most of you have heard of it by now.  In a nutshell, it seems as though those wacky cut-ups at East Anglia University in Great Britain–which happens to be the one-stop shop for global warming information–was caught fudging its data, thanks to some leaked e-mails that illustrated the shenanigans in rather graphic detail.  We also found out that the source code used to create their climate models is hopelessly buggy–not that it makes much of a difference, as the University somehow deleted most of the raw data used to track temperature changes over the last 150 years.

In military parlance, this is what’s known as a Charlie Foxtrot.

It’s also what happens when science intersects with politics:  what’s supposed to be a dispassionate collection and analysis of hard numbers instead turns into some ham-handed manipulation of statistics designed to create a panic about something which may or may not be real.  Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought that science was about what you could prove.  That’s the reason that peer review journals exist:  to present data and findings so that other scientists can reproduce the results under the same conditions.  In that respect, science invites skepticism.  More than that, science thrives on it.  Without others doing their best to poke holes in your theory, you could easily work off assumptions that are dead wrong.

Unless you work at East Anglia.  Apparently those guys are all avid readers of Science Made Stupid (which has a disturbingly prescient breakdown of the modern scientific method)–that, or most of them got their degrees from the Bernie Madoff School of Climate Studies (Motto:  “As long as people keep buying in, what’s the big deal?”).  Problem is, eventually you have to square what you’re selling with what people can see with their own eyes–namely, that there ain’t been a lot of warming for the last ten years or so.  Talk about your inconvenient truths.

So what’s the bottom line?  Well, honest enviornmentalists should be pissed for one.  I don’t know about you, but if mankind really is causing the planet to roast, I’d like to know about it.  Thanks to the East Anglia’s data massage parlor, though, we may never find out–because now they’ve cast doubt over the entire study, not to mention a scientific community that was so anxious to hop on the climate change bandwagon that they didn’t bother to ask the tough questions.  Trust us, they said.  We’re scientists.  We don’t have an agenda.  As it turns out, they don’t have much of a basis for their climate models, either.  That’s a hell of a thing to take on faith, guys–particularly when you’re talking about remaking the entire world economy to combat CO2 emissions.  After this episode, don’t be surprised if people won’t just take your word for it.

Even if there is a consensus.

Apparently this is National Novel Writing Month.  Kind of takes me back to the days when I could crank out a 1,200 page book in four months flat.  Like many other things I used to be able to do when I was 21, not so much anymore…

I had an interesting e-mail exchange with a media columnist from my local paper, the St. Petersburg Times.  The columnist swings pretty well to the left end of the political spectrum, but I’ve always found him to be intellectually honest–which is why I was interested in his views on  Rush Limbaugh’s failed attempt to buy an ownership stake in the NFL.  For those of you late to the party, several major media outlets ran with some nasty quotes attributed to Limbaugh that were never verified, and turned out to be false.  But that didn’t stop the ensuing controversy from torpedoing Limbaugh’s bid to become part-owner of the St. Louis Rams.  Anyway, here’s how I opened up:

I wanted to get your take. . .[n]ot in terms of whether or not the NFL made the right decision (folks can debate that as much as they want, but the NFL is a private organization and they can admit whom they want at their discretion), but rather in terms of what I consider to be outrageous behavior by certain media outlets in parroting some inflammatory quotes that Limbaugh never made.

It’s disturbing that a national organization like CNN would simply take a wikiquote entry as gospel and then run with it without the least bit of verification.  I may only be a lowly Texas Aggie journalism grad, but I can tell ya–if I had engaged in that kind of reporting in my Journalism 101 class, my prof would’ve flunked me on the spot.

If the media want to take Limbaugh down, fine–use his own words in a forthright and truthful way.   But making something up out of whole cloth?  That’s disgraceful.

Here’s what I received in response:

One of the things Rush has always used to his benefit, is the fact that there are not a lot of great ways to check what is said on a radio broadcast — especially one from many years ago.

If you want to read a story I wrote, you can jump on my newspaper’s web site and look in the archives, or pull it up on Lexis/Nexis. But there is no such archive for talk radio hosts or their shows.

That said, CNN acknowledged it made a mistake and Rick Sanchez has said he’s going to apologize.

Frankly, what surprised me about the issue was that i knew that quote was shaky, and there are plenty of verified quotes from Limbaugh saying racially insulting and stereotypical things…  There are some who will argue he’s just joking or its just satire. But some of the most powerful stereotypes and prejudice leveled against people of color has been done in a joking manner.

So maybe CNN got the details of one Limbaugh quote wrong. But there is no doubt in my mind that Limbaugh has been using race-baiting tactics for many years…  I didn’t think it should necessarily keep him from being an NFL team owner. But I’m not shedding any tears now that he’s been dropped from the bid.

Fair enough–but off the point I was trying to make.  I followed up:

How is that an excuse in journalism?  It’s either true or it isn’t, and not bothering to verify something like that is more than sloppy–it’s malicious.

The problem with CNN–even with Rick Sanchez apologizing–is that the media will not change their behavior.  This kind of thing goes all the way up to the editors, who seem to have lost sight of their jobs as advocates for truth and accuracy.  Any idiot knows that you don’t use Wikipedia as a primary source–and if you can’t verify something, you don’t run with it.  But CNN and MSNBC and others did.  That tells me something about the state of American journalism.

And here’s the columnist’s response:

I’m just not sure what you want.

CNN made a mistake about the details of its quote, has corrected the mistake and apologized for the mistake. Unfortunately, mistakes do happen when working on news stories, and the best measure of a news organization is how quickly and completely they deal with such mistakes.

But the larger point of the quote, that Limbaugh has made repeated inflammatory and divisive comments on issues involving race and stereotypes, is valid and backed up by many more quotes.

When is the last time Limbaugh corrected one of the many willful inaccuracies he has aired on his show?

So that’s the new standard in journalism?  Yeah, that’s my bad, but what the other guy did is worse?  I quickly e-mailed back:

I’d like to see editors and producers of news content exercise at least nominal care when working on news stories.  There’s a big difference between an honest mistake and sheer incompetence–or, less chartiably, outright bias.

The point is that this “mistake” should never have been made in the first place.  As you mentioned, CNN had a goldmine of verified quotes they could have used to make the same point.  Why did they go with ones that were false?  I believe it’s because they wanted them to be true because it fits their preconceived notions of the subject.  That kind of attitude is anathema to real journalism.

A reporter should be like a scientist, only interested in what he or she can prove–not engaged in wishful thinking.

Which leads to the columnist’s final word on the matter:

They didn’t make that mistake by assuming something about Rush Limbaugh which was inaccurate. He…has said many inflammatory and prejudiced things on the air. They unfortunately passed along a quote — which has been quoted by many other reputable news outlets, by the way — which turned out to be wrong.

But this mistake wasn’t the product of political bias. It was the result of knowing what Limbaugh does on air, but choosing the wrong quote to prove it.

This, by the way, is a classic tactic to try and keep news organizations from tough reporting. Raise enough of a stink over a minor mistake and maybe it will think twice before trying a tough report again.

You shouldn’t be a part of this tactic…

Got that?  Other news media are now considered to be primary sources for verification of the essential facts of an explosive news story.  Hey, if MSNBC says it’s true, it must be true!  No need to call the guy who supposedly made the quote and ask him to confirm or deny it, right?  I finished up with:

I’m all for tough reporting, but that actually involves some work, not just using Wikipedia.

Strange that a network that fact-checked an SNL skit wouldn’t even apply the same standards to a geniune news story.  Say what you will, but there’s a double-standard at work here…

Some may say I’m beating a dead horse, and maybe I am.  But it’s hard to stay mum when you see this kind of thing on display.  Truth, unfortunately, has turned into something viewed through a political prism.  Fake is okay as long as it fits the general template.  I don’t know about you, but that scares the hell out of me.

So I’m out in the yard mowing my lawn, when from across the street I spot an older lady waving at me and trying to get my attention. I recognize her as the cleaning person who comes to my neighbor Sonny’s house every week–a very nice person, though she doesn’t speak much English, and since my Russian is a little rusty I haven’t really spoken with her much. I shut off the engine and she walks over, presenting me with her cell phone which has apparently stopped working. After popping the battery and restarting it, all is well and she thanks me for my help. A good deed is done, the lawn is almost finished, and my day is off to a pretty good start.

But the mystery remains: Why me?

I’d understand if she thought I was a teenager (kids seem to be born with a texting gene nowadays), but I ain’t exactly a spring chicken. And I might even chalk it up to circumstance, if this had been an isolated incident. But it seems like almost everywhere I go, whenever spontaneous technical assistance is needed, total strangers turn to yours truly to see if I might be able to help. The other day it was at Office Depot, where some dude asked me the difference between PATA and SATA. At Disney World, another person had me check out her video camera. And at Best Buy, even though I wasn’t wearing a blue shirt, someone asked for buying advice on a PC.

Is it just me, or am I giving off a serious geek vibe?

I guess it could be worse. Nobody’s asked me to fix their Zune yet, and I still don’t know anything about Linux, which keeps me on this side of the mortal divide. But it is kind of funny when people find out you know a little something about technology. Suddenly you’re getting cornered at parties and asked for advice, like a doctor or a lawyer. Then before you know it, you’re hooking up your neighbor’s new LCD big screen. I guess those “Will Work for Beer” signs don’t help–but on the other hand, I’ve cleared a lot of free six-packs from my endeavors.

There’s an old saying that if you’re good at something, you should never do it for free. Apparently Rupert Murdoch of News Corp agrees, as he’s been making hints about putting the content of a few of his websites behind a subscription wall. That’s actually no surprise. Even my local news radio station has been running stories about how the Tampa Tribune, which operates an extensive site at TBO.com, is considering a subscription model for at least some of its content. In an era when newspapers are a dying breed, with readership and advertising dollars circling the drain, they’re willing to try most anything to stop the bleeding.

But based on the article I linked above, it won’t be an easy transition. People are used to paying for their papers. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. The internet, however, is a different animal. Up until recently, news organizations have supplied web content largely free o’ charge, raking in some ad bucks but primarily using their web presence as a way of promoting their real product. Now the web is siphoning off potential subscribers, who don’t much feel like buying the cow when the milk and cheese are free. Granted, this is a legitimate concern–but as we’ve seen, it’s a lot harder to get somebody to pony up for something they’ve never had to pay for.

Will it work? Probably not, if the past is really prologue The New York Times gave it a shot with their Times Select, which put their opinion columnists behind a subscriber wall, but soon discovered that aside from a few stalwarts, there weren’t enough Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman fans to make it worthwhile.

But is that all there is to it? Granted, competition from new media is making things much tougher for the legacy operators–but in my view, that the blogs and alternative news sites are free is largely incidental. Their major influence has been to expose the fundamental flaws in “mainstream” news organizations, to the extent that a lot of people simply don’t trust the product. Whether it’s just sloppy reporting or outright bias, many reporters are not giving their customers the straight dope–and when you play your customers for fools, you shouldn’t be surprised when there’s a backlash.

It’s a real shame, too. As a journalism graduate, it really pains me to see a profession that I respect suffer so much. I also fear for the country’s ability to stay properly informed. At one time, editors and reporters performed a vital function in making sure that they got things right–and when they didn’t, they were clear in communicating how they got things wrong. These days, it seems that news organizations do more covering up than covering stories, hyping whatever promotes their opinion agenda while burying the things that don’t fit the narrative. Is it any wonder that more young people get their news from Jon Stewart than the big three networks?

Until the legacy boys do some hard soul searching, I don’t believe things will change much. Trust, once squandered, is a hard thing to get back.