As the leading expert on the Automat I am called upon for a quote whenever something in that (admittedly slow-moving) world happens. I earned that exalted title and the calls that come with it by writing my dissertation on that subject, which writing took a good deal of researching, not a little of it in newspapers from way back when. One of the things I discovered in doing this research is that newspapers are inaccurate, which is the actual topic of this post, not the Automat, about which I have said all I ever need say.
When I say that newspapers are inaccurate I don't mean that they are biased (that statement hardly needs be belabored) nor, as Thomas Jefferson puts it, that they are guilty of "abandoned prostitution to falsehood," though surely some are. No, what I mean is simply that very many of the facts they report are wrong. The journalist, charged with telling us the Who, What, When, and How of the story very often cites the wrong people doing things that were never done at a time when they did not happen and in a manner that is untrue or even impossible. (I won't comment on how they do with the "Why.") I think this happens because life is messy and journalists never, and I really do mean never, have enough time to do their work with a complete or even very high degree of care, not at least where the facts are concerned.
I don't mind that this happens (well I do mind, a little bit, because among the facts they almost always screw up is my name), but I wish more people were aware of this. To quote Jefferson again, and this time more fully:
When I say that newspapers are inaccurate I don't mean that they are biased (that statement hardly needs be belabored) nor, as Thomas Jefferson puts it, that they are guilty of "abandoned prostitution to falsehood," though surely some are. No, what I mean is simply that very many of the facts they report are wrong. The journalist, charged with telling us the Who, What, When, and How of the story very often cites the wrong people doing things that were never done at a time when they did not happen and in a manner that is untrue or even impossible. (I won't comment on how they do with the "Why.") I think this happens because life is messy and journalists never, and I really do mean never, have enough time to do their work with a complete or even very high degree of care, not at least where the facts are concerned.
I don't mind that this happens (well I do mind, a little bit, because among the facts they almost always screw up is my name), but I wish more people were aware of this. To quote Jefferson again, and this time more fully:
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, 'by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.' Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. . . . I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. (Letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell on Hume's Histories of England - Washington, June 14,1807.)
Read your paper, enjoy it, but please, do not trust it or quote it without doing your own fact checking.
Any guesses as to how I feel about television reporting?
