Dog stoned to death - why journalism needs fact-checkers

A dog was sentenced and stoned to death, according to reports in respected news outlets. Except, it really wasn't, those outlets just didn't let fact checking get in the way of a good story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110621/wl_csm/391755;_ylt=An6jOAZ0qPxqK2jJpACEBvK2GL8C;_ylu=X3oDMTJsaHRxMWM3BGFzc2V0A2NzbS8yMDExMDYyMS8zOTE3NTUEY2NvZGUDZ21wZQRjcG9zAzMEcG9zAzMEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNkaWRhamVydXNhbGU-

 

Dan Rather is stunned than anyone would think this happened and then reported it without checking first.

 

What's with false stories on stoning in Jerusalem? I remember a fabricated story in 1994 that appeared in the Arizona State University student newspaper about a parapalegic man in a motorized wheelchair stoned near the Western Wall on the Sabbath.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/shafran1.html

 

This is a two-headed serpent, the result of the 24-hour news cycle and its neverending need to be fed, and the sorry fact that too many news organizations lack the wherewithal to do their own factchecking and reporting because of tight deadlines and thinned staffs.

Nobody wants to get left out of the Big Story, so instead of doing some real reporting, they just parrot and remix what's already out there, attributing to other media outlets. Apparently in tracing this particular story back, the ultimate attribution was to ... NOBODY! But it was too juicy a story for some desks to pass on, so they kept stirring the pot.

Our recent history is rife with such shoddy work, whether it's the Gore-Lieberman "victory" in Florida, the kid in the balloon, or the 30 bodies "found" buried near Houston. Now you'll have to excuse me, I have to slot six stories now, but I only have time to spell-check and send 'em on.

(Just kidding -- we're already done. Besides, I don't roll that way.)

 

I love how folks believe that if they simply cite where they are getting these "reports" from, they have done nothing wrong.