What Journalism Has Become

Why Journalism is Dying, Part 2x10^74

Irish student hoaxes world's media with florid but phony quote from dead French composer


DUBLIN (AP) -- When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major's obituary-friendly quote -- which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 -- flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they'd swallowed his baloney whole.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version -- or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources -- none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.

When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called "a golden opportunity" for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.

He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre's actual life experiences. He noted that the Wikipedia listing on Jarre did not have any other strong quotes.

If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source -- and even might trigger alarms as "too good to be true." But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.

He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal who was solely to blame for their cut-and-paste content.

"The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source," said the readers' editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

"It's worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he'd done, and it's regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so," she wrote.

Fitzgerald said he had waited in part to test whether news organizations or the public would smoke out the quote's lack of provenance. He said he was troubled that none did.

And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia's own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information -- as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances -- and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote.

"I didn't want to be devious," he said. "I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the deadline pressure they're under."

Best AIG Bonus Analogy Yet

"Tipping your rapist."

I can't take credit for this one, I'm just repeating it.

English Empire: Result of Bad Food?

Paul writes:

There are advantages to not having a food culture. I have always
claimed that the reason England conquered half of the world is that
Englishmen were seeking a decent meal. The English sailor would sit
down to a meal of overcooked and greasy meat and vegetables and think,
I need to go conquer a country that knows how to prepare a decent
meal. The Italians, on the other hand, dinned very handsomely and
stayed at home.

Iron Chef, Family Edition

We've all seen that cheesy Japanese TV show (and it's equally cheesy American spinoff) where top chefs compete to whip up amazing dishes in an hour.

That's all fine and good, but as a practical matter, Iron Chef is as valuable to a parent as trying to learn tire rotation tips by watching NASCAR pitstops.

So I propose a new spinoff: Iron Chef Family.

Same basic format, with the array of Iron Chefs and a weekly guest challenger, but from there the rules would be a bit different.

Instead of the mystery ingredient being rare Peruvian sea cucumber, eye of newt or whatnot, ICF would have everyday items like 'hamburger meat', 'broccoli' or 'whatever's on sale that day at Safeway'.

Then would come the *real* challenge: preparing in an hour a meal using everyday ingredients that one could serve to a typical family. No soux chefs, blast chillers, 5 megawatt electric skillets or 'mixologists'. Just a stove, knives, a sink, maybe on special occasions (if they've been good) a blender and a microwave. Oh, and did I mention that the chef has to also get the dishes washed and put away within the hour?

Then would come the judging. Two families of four. Mom, dad and the 2.2 kids would judge the meals. Scoring would be on taste, nutrition, balance (did the chef put out an entree, a starch AND a vegtable?) and most importantly: did the kids eat it?

Iron Chef is great for the fancy restaurant crowd with their huge fully-staffed kitchens. But you want to impress me? Make a great meal that everyone will eat in an hour. Hell, if it tastes good enough, I'll throw in an extra 30 minutes to let him square away the leftovers.

Heck, just watching the Chairman scream "Hamburger Helper!" while revealing the secret ingredient might make the entire show worthwhile.

The Fall of Empire

Talk about reporting your own death:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/12/business/20090312-papers-graphic.html


I find this another interesting example of the *huge* social changes that the internet has brought. Digital cameras have devastated (for now, at least) professional photography, all the way from High Fashion and Advertising to the mall photo booth. Job outsourcing has within a few years devastated domestic employment as any "information job" can be run from "anywhere". Finance and Wall St. have exploded with the ability to suck money from anyone with cash and an internet connection. Online sales have put major pressures on "Brick and Mortar" retailers. Medical, political, the list goes on and on.

We all remember the power of William Randolf Hearst. Strange how the seemingly unrelated invention of "The Internet" has brought these huge and powerful institutions to their knees. They can't even sell the newspapers now... the entire business or even the paper its printed on. Remarkable.

P.S. I predict TV will be the next media victim. In the next 10-15 years, we'll see broadcast TV and many "cable" TV shows go the way of the payphone. (Cue post on the remarkable social re-working brought about by the mobile phone!)

So... Do We Have Free Healthcare Now or What?

For decades Republicans have warned that free healthcare for all would lead to economic collapse, the onset of high taxes, unemployment, frozen equity markets, just to name a few.


So.... we got all that. Where's my free healthcare? I'm still getting bills.

We're totally in the crapper. Did we lose a war or what?

Oh, right. We did. We lost to ourselves.

Saving the Rich

On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 2:00 PM, XX wrote:
> There needs to be a examination of the cost of government compared to the
> output
> of it's citizens. When Gov't expenses go to high, taxes go up, workers are
> likely to balk at improving their income.
> It will cease to be an issue, because we are approaching 50% of our voters
> not paying any federal tax. That means they will decide to increase taxes on those who do pay.
>
> Notice how "the wealthy" are now paid less and less. Now it's about $250K.
> In a previous Democratic administration, a Millionaire was someone that
> earned a million
> dollars in their life time.
>

Ah, another Red Herring. "If you raise taxes too high, people will just refuse to work."

This reflects an *aggregious* mis-understanding of the tax code.


Let's say, for example that you make $100. Let's say that the tax rate is 40% up to and including $100, and 50% for $101 and up.

So, when you make $102, what is your tax?

A) $102 * 0.5 = $51
B) ($100 * 0.4) + ( $2 * 0.5 ) = $40 + $1 = $41


We have a *staged* tax system. The answer in 'B'.



I've not heard of a single extremely-rich person (we used to call them "millionaires") that's in it for the money. I doubt there's a single one that says, "You know, I've made enough money, why don't I stop for a while?" or "You know, if I make over X, it'll just send me into the next tax bracket. No thanks."

The only people we hear talking about this is A) Republican talking heads B) People who *want* to be millionaires, but don't even understand the basics of finance enough to become rich, let alone millionaires.

Show me one instance in which Warren Buffet said, "No more money for me! I don't want to be in the next tax bracket."

Rich people will turn all sorts of tricks to avoid paying taxes. They may *defer* income into "down" years or whatnot, but I'd like to see one case of a truly "rich" person refusing the opportunity to make money because it would kick them into the next income tax bracket.

I never cease to get amusement out of middle-class Republicans that will bend over backwards to screw themselves in order to save "the rich" money.


A much better avenue of attack would be chasing down that 50% that doesn't pay taxes.


Lemme propose a test:

Let's say someone approaches you on the street and says, "If you give me a nickel, I'll give you $250k, but you must give 75% of it to a random passer-by."

Do you accept or no?



A final point. I *used* to be in the $250,000 bracket. I'll *gladly* pay whatever tax Obama wants rather than continue to "save tax money" under the W administration. I'm tired of this "American's don't want to work (because taxes are too high)" bullshit.

My thoughts exactly:

The Cunning Realist

That Would Have Worked Out Well

Anyone seen any recent calls for Social Security private accounts?

The stock market crash has shown how catastrophic private accounts would have been, and who would have really benefited from them. Would the government have allowed the Bear Stearns and Lehman outcomes had the Social Security system been chock full of those stocks? Remember, both were former blue chips, the sort of companies that proponents of private accounts insisted any new system would be limited to. The same for Citi, AIG, Fannie Mae, and others. How much pressure would the Fed and Treasury have felt -- and what more would have been done -- to keep those afloat and/or out of penny stock land?

That pressure would have been exerted by millions of unpaid but highly effective lobbyists: people emailing and calling Washington, demanding that their Social Security money -- and so the stocks, the companies, and the executives -- be saved. Corporate bondholders would have loved it, since the Social Security system effectively would have become a massive safety buffer. Would "nationalization" even be considered if it meant destroying part of Social Security?

Private accounts are dead now, so it's a bit of a moot point. But I wonder how many of those who both supported them and genuinely object to the prevailing bailout ethos ever thought this through.