visagrunt wrote:
Janissy wrote:
When a reporter reports what a politician (or anybody) says, they are telling the truth as long as they don't misquote the person. They have reported not on the veracity of the statement, but on the fact that the person said it. The proper place for questioning the veracity of what someone says is in an opinion piece, not a news story. A news story should report merely the fact that they said it.
Is that the responsible course of action?
How quickly does a NYT article that says, "Mitt Romney stated that, 'Obama has made speeches apologizing for America.'," become, "I read in the
Times that Obama's apologizing for America?"
It all depends on how the story is framed. If it is framed as a story about things Romney is saying while on the campaign trail and gearing up to oppose Obama, I don't think people will be so quick to mentally omit the "Mitt Romney stated..." part. People do have a tendency to forget who a quote was attributed to (I recall some research about that, but don't recall it well enough to know the google search words). But that was when the story people were reacting to was all about the contents of the quote. If it was a story about things Obama has said about America, that's when people would mentally gloss over that this was a Romney quote. But when it's a story all about Romney in the heat of campaign season, I don't think that's such a danger.
Quote:
If you are a critical consumer of news and information, you might well look behind Mr. Romney's statement. But how many readers exercise that same scrutiny? And frankly, how often can any of us do that much digging. Most of us have jobs, families, hobbies, and very, very important television to watch. At some point, I rely on the journals I trust to present the news to me in a fully formed fashion.
I don't have the time to fact check everything either. But the context of the story matters. The context of this story is campaign season and the absurdities politicians say about their election rivals. During campaign season, politicians smear each other. That's just what they do. Knowing that they do that is knowledge that the reader brings to the story.
13 Jan 2012, 3:56 pm
