NY Times Correction, More Reasons Young People Don't Read Newspapers

The New York Times ran an article titled "1 in 7 freed detainees rejoins fight, report says" which I used to explain a major reason young people do not read newspapers. The article regurgitated a claim by the Pentagon without the slightest bit of questioning or investigative journalism. I, and many others, questioned the legitimacy of this claim, but the reporters that brought us the news did not. Today they had to clarify.

But the article on which he based that statement was seriously flawed and greatly overplayed. It demonstrated again the dangers when editors run with exclusive leaked material in politically charged circumstances and fail to push back skeptically.

And Jill Abramson, the managing editor for NY Times' news, went on...

Abramson said, “The whole game of leaks can be problematical if you aren’t given a document or the time to look at it in a full way.”

Ah yes. No document to back up the claims. This is a completely ridiculous excuse. Two days after the article first appeared, I contacted the Pentagon to ask for a clarification of how they determine whether or not a detainee has rejoined the fight. I received this pdf, which clearly demonstrates that the 1 in 7 number was an "unverified" statistic.

The lack of truth (the lies), in this article were not due to the pentagon withholding the relevant "document" at all. In fact, the Pentagon was more than willing to provide a document relating to the news. And had they bothered to read the document, they would have seen this part:

Definition of “Suspected” — Significant reporting indicates a former Defense Department detainee is involved in terrorist activities, and analysis indicates the detainee most likely is associated with a specific former detainee or unverified or single-source, but plausible, reporting indicates a specific former detainee is involved in terrorist activities.

"Unverified"

In other words, the entire point of the article, the title, was unverified. And yet, the investigative journalists, that we are supposed to bend over backwards saving, did not even take the time to ask for relevant documents. They were not given to them, so they assumed they did not exist. That is why I laugh in the face of anyone that says the death of the newspaper means the death of investigative journalism.

The New York Times needs to run another clarification:

We did not bother to take the time to ask questions of the Pentagon, or to even ask how they determine that a detainee has returned to the fight. Instead, we took the lazy way out. We ran with what they gave us. We owe better than that to our readers.

This Is Why Young People Don't Read Newspapers

Recently, I wrote about how important the difference between sourcing and linking is to young people. I wrote about how skeptical my generation is, how we are never surprised to find politicians, journalists, teachers, anyone, lying to us. I wrote about how linking to sources provides our skepticism with somewhere to go. This article on MSNBC's website is the perfect example.

This article asserts that "many detainees rejoin fight" without ever taking the time to define the term "rejoin fight." It credits, or sources, the appropriate people, but does not provide a single link to these sources. So the article carries absolutely no weight, whatsoever. If we do not know how the Pentagon determines that an individual has rejoined the fight, well, we really cannot make up our own mind as to whether or not that claim is true.

This is why I feel so passionately about linking to sources. In this case, it appears that this report is unreleased as of yet. Clearly, this is simply a journalist reporting on what the Pentagon says. This journalist did not take the time to ask the Pentagon to clarify what rejoining the fight means. Is this that awesome investigative journalism I keep hearing about? Is this the standard that I am supposed to save? Give me a break. This article is pure propaganda. I am predicting, right now, that this term includes things like; he met someone that might be a terrorist in a bar, he wrote something for a newspaper that was anti-American, he gave a speech chastising the US for torture, and so on, and so on...

They did it before...

three of the former detainees included in one of the 43 reports were described as having "returned to the battlefield" because they were in a documentary about Guantanamo, as well as five who were included because their lawyer wrote a letter to the editor about Guantanamo and two who had never even been in Guantanamo

The Difference Between Crediting and Linking

As I watched Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos, on MSNBC talking about Maureen Dow's recent plagiarism, it reminding me of something my father and I were talking about recently. I have been itching to write something on the death of newspapers, as I believe they are dying. We are watching them die. They are dying for one reason, and one reason only, the newspaper is an outdated method of bringing information to an individual. To many, this seems as natural as the death of the typewriter after the development of computers. Yet to many others, this is equivalent to the death of investigative journalism.

That is what they tell us. They tell us that only in a newspaper do we receive quality, local, investigative journalism. And somehow, this has become an accepted truth. Maybe it is just the MSM standing up for other MSM, but we should not blindly accept this assumption. We should not assume that it is improbable, let alone impossible, that television, radio, and, gasp, web journalists can provide quality investigative journalism. The acceptance of this assumption is a statement about our society, that we are resigned to a main stream media that brings us gossip instead of news. What I wonder about all these people that feel we need to stand up and save the newspapers to save investigative journalism is; what have you done to demand good journalism from television, radio, and web journalist?

My father and I were talking about this and he related this story to me. 'Me and my golf buddies were talking about the newspapers. They brought up that argument, and I said to them, that's crap. When you read a newspaper you get one source, when I go online for news I have infinite sources.' This topic of sources is so vitally important, and relevant to the Dowd controversy. As Markos stated, bloggers are incredibly stringent on sourcing. When we read blogs with quotes and no links, we immediately take a step back. We demand links. We demand sources.

Something Markos did not talk about, however, is the difference between crediting, or sourcing, and linking. When you read a newspaper, they may quote a United Nations resolution, and credit it appropriately. You can, later, dig up that source to see for yourself. On a blog, on the other hand, you do not just get a source name, you get a link. You can, right then and there, open that source and see it for yourself. What that allows us to do, is find out whether or not the author is taking something out of context.

As a young person, I can tell you that my generation has grown up skeptical of everyone and everything. My father used to tell me how surprised they were to find that they had been lied to about Vietnam. My generation is never surprised when we are lied to. That is status quo for us. My generation, coincidentally, is also reading newspapers less than all older age groups. I do not think our skepticism is why we do not read newspapers. We do not read them because, as I stated previously, a newspaper is an outdated method for receiving information. However, newspapers are not capable of fulfilling what we look for, in some part, because of our skepticism.

Our skepticism, however, makes us perfect for blogs and website journalists. With linking, instead of merely crediting, our skepticism has somewhere to go. And linking, is something that newspapers will never be able to do. When the NYTimes newspaper quotes a source to me, they will never be able to deliver, right then and there, the entire source for me to see myself. Maybe you do not see the importance of linking as I do. Maybe you are more trusting then I am. I find, however, that on both sides of the isle, taking quotes out of context is status quo. Chery picking quotes is status quo. Sourcing does little to help, but linking may be the key. If you know that your readers can instantly see the source you are quoting, you are more likely to take the extra effort to make sure your quote is ethical.