[WikiEN-l] NY Times considers BLP issues

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

William Pietri wrote

> The New York Times has a public editor, an ombudsman-like role, 
> currently filled by Clark Hoyt. He has just written an article where he 
> examines the same problem we face with BLPs of marginal figures:
> 
>     http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/opinion/26pubed.html
> 
> It's exciting to see sources coming to grips with the problems we've 
> been dealing with for a while. Interesting that they only get one 
> complaint a day; I gather our numbers are higher.

Yes, very interesting. Journalists are so charming. "We can't change the article because it is part of the historical record." Such confusion. Journalism is only ever 'the first draft of history'. Newpapers are notoriously bad at publishing adequate apologies and corrections: no real prominence given. And now it turns out that not only are they not interested in doing a second draft, they regard the first draft as part of the 'historical record', not to be tampered with.

They could of course footnote those old, erroneous articles to show exactly how wrong they got it. This would be good for scholars. Rather worse for the newspaper's reputation, of course.

I'm rather cheered about WP's model. I was asked last night whether WP posts apologies. No, we don't, but rather than a formulaic expression of regret, we can move fast to fix things up and have fewer pretensions about always being right.

Charles

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