DWTS, Brett Favre and a lot of terrible journalism

Pretty good "Anatomy of a Rumor Going Viral" piece here about how the idea of Brett Favre being on Dancing With The Stars got sloppily whispered down the row:

http://www.quickish.com/articles/brett-favre-on-dancing-with-the-stars-no-not-even-a-rumor

 

I was just going to post this, too, glad I, you know, looked at the thread titles first.

I'd say it's very scary, but frankly, it's the way things are right now and something we all have to live with and guard against.

 

Great deconstruction by Shanoff. Nice to see him point out the Bleacher Report guy might have been the best behaved as the rumor made its way down the line.

 

Minor masterpiece—as much of a one as you could get from a series of clicks, anyway. Excellent cautionary tale; everyone in journalism should read it, especially everyone who blogs and tweets.

 

Reminds me of the wonderful Daily Howler breakdown of the terrible, terrible journalism done in the name of the "Al Gore Says He Invented the Internet" meme. A really good read if you've never seen it. Scroll down to "Where does Spin come from?"

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml

At least in the case of Favre and DWTS, there are no real world consequences, unlike Gore.

 

That's what passes for journalism these days.

Hope no one got fired for failing to report that Brett Favre was being considered for DWTS.

 

I wonder if Mike Wise retweeted it.

 

Solid.

 

I think it's funny that most of the denial stories make it sound like ABC would never stoop so low as to let Brett Favre on it's beloved dancing show.

 

I found it ironic that this line appeared in a story about reporters always getting things wrong:

"Reporters knew that Gore had been the leader, within the Congress, in developing what we now call the Net."

So, essentially what the author is trying to say is reporters always get things wrong and are always wrong, except for the one time that they knew Al Gore was creating the internet.

Except the author went on to say that later in the news cycle, reporters passed incorrect information about Gore. So really, what the author is saying is, reporters always get stuff wrong except for 1/2 of the times they are talking about Al Gore and the internet.

 

That's an excellent breakdown. A reason why I always want to know sources on rumor stories. There may be hope for BR yet ...

 

After all, DWTS had Lawrence Taylor on a few years back, and several more of the so-called celebrities have been in trouble with the law or on the pages of nudie magazines.