For journalists and reporters, these are very dangerous times. Polls show the least public confidence in the standard news media than in any other time in American history. Consolidation has slashed the opportunities for reporters and greatly scaled back the coverage outlets can provide. Social media has allowed public institutions to serve as their own “reporters” and issue statements, videos, and podcasts that tightly control their own narratives–while anyone with a smartphone camera or a Blogspot account can title themselves a “citizen reporter”. And politicians on both sides claim unfair treatment from those covering them and find a sympathetic support base that believes the “truth” is only what they want to believe is true.
And that is why when major media outlets make very public mistakes, it makes it increasingly harder for everyone else in the business. Last week, the USA Today had to take down 23 stories from a single reporter due to blatant falsifications. Gabriela Miranda, in effect, made up people and quotes in stories that she wrote. It was only after organizations that were cited in her stories kept contacting USA Today to ask for corrections because they weren’t associated with the people quoted in the stories, that editors started asking Miranda for proof she actually talked to the people she wrote about–and that they said what she wrote they said. It is implied that in at least one instance, Miranda produced an audio copy of a fake interview done with someone other than the person she claimed it was–but eventually broke down and admitted she made up everything.
This case (and a couple of other ones I’ll touch on in a bit) was the topic of a number of emails and articles sent around this weekend within the journalism biosphere. There was plenty of advice on how to catch what are known as “fabulists” in your newsroom, properly verifying quotes from people cited in articles, and how to deal with the same mess USA Today now finds itself in. But what really wasn’t addressed was why a reporter would want to make up people and quotes in the first place.
I see three factors in play in this case: 1–A tight deadline for publication and not hearing from legitimate sources for comments to include in a story. Everybody has “media relations” people on staff now. The days of calling the police department and getting an officer to describe what happened at a scene are over. Only the Public Information Officer is allowed to speak to the press now–usually from a prepared statement. The same goes for school districts, larger non-profit organizations, and corporations. And when that person only works 8-4 Monday thru Friday and not on holidays or weekends, you don’t always get that “side of the story”, or any meaningful details on a public incident. When that happens, and you need to put something in a column that is a minimum required length, you may be tempted to just toss in a quote and hope nobody notices.
2–Not wanting to put in the work. Cold calling people sucks. It’s uncomfortable and if the person you are calling is the focus of negative publicity, you are likely to get a very angry and sometimes threatening response. Young folks today are told they shouldn’t have to put up with being uncomfortable, so they try to avoid direct conflict. Thus the temptation to just make up a response–or claim you reached out and the person had “no comment”–is great. That is what got Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz in hot water recently, as she claimed to been rebuffed by the subjects of at least one article when no attempt to contact was made–resulting in the Post adding four separate “clarifications” to the story as Lorenz continued to change her own version of what work she did on the article. (According to the New York Times, Lorenz has been taken off the Social Media beat and an editor has been assigned to review and verify all of her work now.)
The third possible scenario is the inability to find a source that backs up the angle the reporter took going into the story. The hot trend in our business is “advocacy journalism”–where a reporter believes that there is a social injustice taking place and looks to write a piece that is going to “rectify that injustice”. Often times reporters can find sources for information and comments supporting their premise easily. Sometimes, the writers find out they may have overestimated the problem–but they have made their pitch to the editors, and to go back and say “Yeah, that’s not such a big deal to people” kinda makes you look bad, so you make up an advocacy group and a spokesperson, or you create a “victim” of this injustice and tell the story you think they would experience–and what do you know, get very sympathetic eyes and ears.
You are going to hear a lot this year about the work done by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in uncovering the Watergate coverup as we have reached the 50th anniversary. But as you consume that, keep in mind that neither of them went into their stories thinking “We are going to bring down Richard Nixon and his entire administration!” They went were the facts of the matter (and Mark Felt’s inside information) took them–and it just so happened that it did lead directly to the Oval Office.
I was willing to bet that number three would be the root cause of Miranda’s fabulism, and when the list of retracted articles included ones like “Campus Ministry at Virginia Tech had its Pride Flag Stolen, Replaced with Confederate Flag”, “Anti-Vaxxer Pushes Urine Therapy as ‘COVID Antidote’ Without Scientific Evidence” and “Texas Abortion Ban Could Lead to Stockpiling Contraceptives and Pregnancy Tests” I thought was right. But then some of the other stories with fake sources and quotes included “Capybara Population ‘Wreaking Havoc’ in Wealthy Community in Argentina” and “The Top 1o Most-Popular Liquors During Christmas and Why You Should Grab Yours Now”. I realized that Miranda likely just didn’t want to put in the work.
Regardless of the cause of the fabrications and falsifications, the Miranda case, the Lorenz case, and the caustic in-fighting at the Washington Post I commented on last week that was fueled by social media trolling and finally led to the firing of Felicia Sonmez, journalism and the media have taken more blows in the eyes of the public. And when “Fake News!” has become the rallying cry of so many Americans, to give them actual fake news just adds more fuel to the fire threatening to consume us.
