Online News Stories that Change Behind Your Back 309
The second iteration was more favorable -- or at least less unfavorable -- to Microsoft than the original, but Wastler denies any Microsoft involvement in the change. "Advertisers do not interfere with our content," he says, and notes that neither he nor any other CNN/Money editors were contacted by Microsoft about this story. He does say, though, that the later version was "more balanced" than the earlier one.
In my experience, Microsoft PR people are not capable of reacting to anything as quickly as this story changed, so the chance of a conspiracy here is about zero. As for Wastler's "more balanced" comment, that is his judgement, and you are free to agree or disagree with it. (I'm sure some Slashdot readers will say he is correct, and others will say he is not. Editorial decisions never please everyone.)
"Writethroughs" are Routine in Online News
In the news business, stories that change after the originals run are called "writethroughs." This practice originated with wire services like UPI, AP, and Reuters, who might send subscribing editors a story with the headline, "Office building on fire in downtown Cleveland," followed by one or two paragraphs of copy, with progressively longer versions of the same story coming through the wire, hour by hour, as reporters on the scene gather more information.
Wastler says CNN/Money readers look at his site "like a wire service" and expect stories to change over the course of a day. As an example, during our phone conversation he pointed me to a recently posted CNN/Money story with the headline, U.S. productivity soars, and noted that this story might be updated and expanded several times, so that "by the end of the day, it might become a magazine length feature."
Online News Association President Bruce Koon says, via email, "Writethroughs are very common nowadays among news sites, from MSNBC to CBSMarketWatch to CNN. Pretty standard practice nowadays to freshen headlines and leads as new developments occur. Some sites have labels such as 'update' or 'breaking news' but it varies. For top stories, I don't see that kind of labeling." In his day job, Koon is Executive News Editor for Knight Ridder Digital, so he ought to know.
I was not aware that this practice was routine in the online news business until a few days ago. Old-style wire service writethroughs were as specific as a rigorously kept programmer's changelog, right down to paragraph and line number. Maybe I'm naive, but if I am going to trust a news source, I expect that same level of care in story updates, or at least something like News.com's corrections page, which lets readers know what changes, if any, have been made to published stories before they are archived.
What's the Difference Between an Update and a Correction?
I doubt that most news site readers know the story they are seeing at the moment they read it is not necessarily the same as the story that was published earlier at the same URL -- unless we tell them. We run the risk of getting into the habit of "getting it first" at the expense of "getting it right" if we start thinking, "Well, we can fix it later, so let's go with what we have now even if it's not confirmed as carefully as we'd really like."
This is not the same as running a story that begins by saying something like, "An unconfirmed statement by...," followed by a later story that either confirms or denies the original statement, and it is not the same as an Update notice added to the original story when it is expanded or corrected. At CNN/Money, when a story is updated it gets a fresh time/date stamp, and Wastler says that's plenty. The problem with this is that someone reading the latest version who didn't see the previous one has no way to know that an earlier -- possibly incorrect -- version ever existed.
Columbia University journalism professor Sreenath Sreenivasan (AKA Sree) says, "You really need to make it clear to your readers if your stories have been changed or updated." He makes his students do that on Columbia's Web sites, even though some of them complain that commercial news sites, where many of them hope to work after graduation, wouldn't necessarily make them take this extra step.
Sree feels strongly that if a Web site changes a news story, for whatever reason, it should put, "'last updated at' or something like that" along with the original publication time and date.
More Analysis of the CNN/Money Story Example
Andrew Nachison, of the American Press Institute's Media Center, took a close look at our original CNN/Money example and gave us this analysis:
The Microsoft trial story on CNN looks like a typical write-thru of an earlier story, with new information from afternoon events. The morning's top news, that a Microsoft witness had trouble answering some questions, got bumped lower in the story as other witnesses testified later in the day. On its face, no big deal.However, CNN did a disservice to its audience - especially the audience paying close attention to that particular story - by failing to explain the changes. A brief note would have helped, or a link to a journal of update notes for the story, so users - like newspaper wire editors - could, in a glance, understand how the story had changed from previous versions.
Something else would have helped CNN's audience: if CNN had an obvious, standard policy for publishing update notes that the audience expected and was used to.
What's most remarkable to me is that we're well into the digital publishing era but most digital news providers have yet to develop clear standards for how to handle updates and notes about updates so users are better informed. Publishers need to do this for two reasons: first, to better serve their audiences (which should translate into credibility with the audience) and second, to promote expectations and standards that audiences can come to expect of all credible news providers.
Errors that require corrections add a whole different level of challenge to digital publishing. Today it's virtually impossible to erase a mistake once it's published online. Web browsers call up cached versions stored on hard drives, some sites intentionally archive Web sites for historical research, and Internet service providers like AOL cache popular pages to speed service to customers. So AOL customers may hit a cached version of a story that contains errors corrected in a subsequent version that has yet to be cached by the AOL servers.
If online news publishers truly have their audience's best interests in mind then they should go out of their way to alert the audience to corrections and to make it clear when an update corrects previously published errors. They need to set the record straight.
University of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams has also looked at our example story. She says:
Updating the story in real time without noting that it has been changed: That's okay by me, in principle. But in this case, it's really very different.I would be inclined to believe the Money.CNN folks who told you it's no big deal -- for them. In other words, I do NOT believe it's sneaky or anything like that.
But for the rest of the world (non-journalists), this MUST be very confusing!
I asked Wastler if CNN/Money had ever thought about archiving older story versions as new ones appeared, and linking from the new versions to the older, archived ones. He said, "The name of the game is speed, getting [stories] up on the site." He talked of the sheer number of stories a site like his publishes daily, and how loading any more work on his editorial staff, like moving old story versions to an archive, "would bog things down." I pointed out that this was something a simple script could do with a single "replace story/move old story to archive" click from an editor, and his reply was, "Well, I am not as technical as you... I don't know about that."
(This was not a hostile conversation. Wastler reads Slashdot now and then and likes it, and says, "My tech guys love Slashdot." Perhaps one of you Slashdot-reading CNN tech guys could talk to Wastler and other CNN editors about automatic story versioning. Wastler said that because of syndication deals and inbound links, his main concern was keeping a stable URL for each story even if went through a series of updates. This should not be hard to arrange.)
Future Directions for Online News
In a followup email, Bruce Koon said the idea of constant story updates on the Internet should not surprise anyone. His exact words:
How is the model different from TV or radio broadcast news? As news gets reported as it's happening, facts are going to change, new developments are happening. If anything, we've been trying to get newspapers away from this notion that they print once. The Internet is about continuous updates and reporting.Also, unlike Slashdot or other new forms of information gathering and reporting, news audiences only go to a news site a few times a day to read what the latest news is. Most seem to know that the version of the story they're reading now is different from what they read before, just as they know the top of the hour report on the radio news may be different from what they heard two hours earlier.
Based on Koon's statement, the long term question seems to be whether Internet news evolution should be based on a broadcast model, with broadcast-style immediacy as its most important goal, or whether it should be based on a print model that assumes we are writing the "first rough draft of history" so that what we say today has archival significance tomorrow.
I think the two patterns are going to coexist, and rather than "convergence" we are going to see a gradual divergence between the two as "Internet news" simply becomes "news" instead of being seen as different or separate from other media. Watching how readers (viewers?) react to this change (assuming they notice it at all) over the next decade or so is going to be interesting.
A big part of the change is going to be figuring out how to maintain audience trust when it is so easy to digitally morph stories, pictures and almost anything else into states that are far different from their original ones. As Nachison points out, despite the apparently transitory nature of online news, nothing on the Internet ever quite goes away. It is all archived or cached somewhere once it gets into digital form, whether it was originally prepared for delivery on the Internet, on printed pages or for cable or over-the-air broadcast.
Professor Sreenivasan says, "We're all in the early days of this business. We need to evolve standards."
That we do. But is the "we" who evolves standards going to be the people who read (or view) the news or is "we" going to be the people who produce it? And that leads to another question: Where will we draw the line between reporters and readers/viewers, or will we even bother to differentiate between them, when PDAs with broadband wireless connections and built-in digital video cameras become common, everyday consumer items?
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
And, like you said, you can't change the magazine once it's out in print.
Orwell's 1984 (Score:2, Interesting)
And Orwell didn't invent this himself - this is precisely what the Soviet system did back in the days of Stalin. Whenever yet another party big shot "turned out to be the Soviet people enemy", i.e. convicted in yet another truth-mocking trial, he was carefully removed from all the old newspapers, books and especially school textbooks. It's amazing to think just how much images with Trotsky were edited in that manner...
Re:Orwell's 1984 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Orwell's 1984 (Score:2)
Both his biography and the documentry on his life lead one to believe that he was eliminated at the end, but some of us know the real story. He is alive and well. I have it memorized and will pass it along to my son before I make my time.
Warmest reguards,
Guy Montag
Updating the news (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but you can update the articles throughout the day as later editions roll off the press. I used to work for an afternoon newspaper, covering court trials. You would have to write one version of the story, perhaps speculating on what was going to happen, for the early editions that went out to outlying counties, then file another story with the morning highlights of the trial for the editions delivered to homes within the city, then try to get something sensational splashed across the front page for the final edition that was sold on the downtown streets. The focus of the story could change throughout the day, and often another reporter would be sent in to make sure you didn't miss anything while the first reporter was outside the courtroom filing a report (no laptop usage was allowed inside the courtroom).
the only past is the past we tell you (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the only past is the past we tell you (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the only past is the past we tell you (Score:2)
Yes, I understand what the poster is saying, but this has to be about the stupidest
Unless I'm missing something; perhaps I didn't see the Pentagon briefing where they stated that 9-11 had nothing to do with the continuing war against Al Queda (sp).
Re:the only past is the past we tell you (Score:2)
The Orwellian scenario that this echos is one where the enemy does change but the war-footing does not, justice and liberty remaining permanently out of reach.
Re:the only past is the past we tell you (Score:2)
Some sick individuals view this as a feature, not a bug.
When this happens, these people presume that what was changed (and the more extensive the attempt to cover up the fact of the change) has some bearing on reality than what replaced it.
Personally, I feel disappointment when I notice the malreports and misprints. Sloppy work is one thing, but this is more than sloppy, it's dangerous. At this early, critical stage (when the malquotes may still bear some resemblance to reality), it's horrible OPSEC. It may actually enable such misguided individuals to make educated guesses as to who wanted the change and why they wanted it changed. The whole damn thing could come unglued.
For the diseased folks who actually keep track of these sorts of miniscule things when there are plenty of bright shiny things to look at, fine - go ahead and do your dirty work in the privacy of your own mind (for now), but don't ever keep copies the old malreported news stories around. Miniluv hates that.
(Are you listening, you RCS/CVS developers? You see what kind of treason you're enabling with your so-called "revision control" tools? Knock it right off this instant! Minitrue believes in Revision Control - the real kind, not the Goldsteinist malreport-preservation you do! How dare you corrupt Newspeak by calling that revision control! How on earth can you control revisions when you have a complete history of every change made? Pure Goldsteinism!)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
independent news is best (Score:2, Informative)
Balanced reporting, and they often scoop the Big Players too.
Fox [foxnews.com] has pretty good, balanced news, too.
Re:independent news is best (Score:2)
World Net Daily is practices balanced reporting? Since when?
The conservative rag known as WND has as much claim to journalistic integrity as Slashdot.
Dinivin
Re: (Score:2)
Not all news services... (Score:3, Informative)
As far as websites, if you read, for example, the business news feeds on finance.yahoo.com you will see exactly the same thing.
I guess it's more just a matter of convenience for consumer-oriented websites to ignore the details.
Um, no they don't... (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's how it goes, and has done so "forever", in most electronic news services...
Follow-ons may have an indicator suggesting which "take" this item is. This is the orderly disclosure of news as it develops, as mentioned in the story. So, as an IBM announcment is being read, you might see...
IBM earnings Company says econ improved greatly
IBM earnings -2- up 1.00 over last year
IBM earnings -3- revenue up 20%
But, the systems also allow stories to be deleted, replaced, or changed post-publication. Rarely, if ever, is there any indication this has happened, or what those changes were. Most contracts even prohibit distributors from keeping, or indicating, what changes were made.
As a rule, this is done so bad info can be retracted/corrected as quickly as possible. This limits potential damages from libel, since a real-time fix demonstrates both lack of intent and minimizes the number of people that view bad v. correct data. Sometimes, but not always, the story will indicate the story you're viewing is a correction for a previous one you may have read.
How this is used is a matter of editorial discretion. Some companies, like Bloomberg, Reuters, Dow Jones, and AP are pretty good about using the tools appropriately. They usually indicate when matrial changes (other than spelling/grammer) have been made in the story text itself. The worst case is story deletes, you never know when "I saw XYZ on the services" will make you a lier.
But, as in all matters of discretion, some ompanies have, well, a little less integrity than others.
Although I'm sure it's happened, I don't think I've seen the reputable services make a practice of "re-drafting" a story post-pub.
Not that this would change much. In this case, Microsoft may not have made a phone call, but the re-draft was quite likely a matter of the existing business sensibilities with MSFT. "Final Readers" in the better services would have simply rejected the story pre-pub, and pushed it back into the process, for a re-write in that "more balanced" way.
1984 reference yet again (Score:5, Interesting)
but that was one of the central ideas of the book, news articles, etc, being
changed after the fact. If you went back and did any research, you would find
that the news agency/authority in charge of information was always right.
In more mundane terms, you really have to wonder about a news agency that
changes it's story and doesn't even post a retraction.
SealBeater
Re:1984 reference yet again (Score:2)
Re:1984 reference yet again (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:1984 reference yet again (Score:2, Insightful)
In 1984, Big Brother made up his own 'truth' as convenient for the moment. If was was expedient to change it, then the 'truth' changed.
In news reporting, an initial story may have inaccuracies. One hopes that with each revision, the reported story becomes closer and closer to the actual truth. It is fairly unlikely that the original story is better than the revised one.
Most consumers of news aren't interested in older and less-accurate versions of a story. It's quicker and easier to read the most-accurate-so-far version than to read the initial version and then mentally overlay all the updates.
I guess the latter approach appeals more to geek-types because we tend to be more interested in the mechanics of things. Irrelevant details matter to geeks 8-)
Just wait for DMCA (Score:2)
Re:1984 reference yet again (Score:5, Informative)
the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And
yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been
altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to
everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an
unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality
control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'
- George Orwell's "1984" http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
Should History Record the Unvarnished Bush?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A17
Last Tuesday was one for the presidential blooper reel.
At a speech in Bridgeport, Conn., President Bush declared that he wanted each American to volunteer for "4,000 years," a variation of his usual call for "4,000 hours" that produced guffaws in the audience. Later, at a fundraiser, Bush bestowed a new name on Connecticut's lieutenant governor, Jodi Rell. "I appreciate Lieutenant Governor Judi Kell for being here," he said. "Great to see you again, Judi."
Whatever, says Cathleen Hinsch, a spokeswoman for Rell. "You don't correct the president."
But the White House does. Both goofs, and accompanying laughter, were stricken from the record -- deus ex machina -- in the official White House transcripts.
A similar sanitizing occurred the day before, in Knoxville, Tenn., when Bush was interrupted by hecklers shouting about Enron and the counterterrorism campaign -- an unusual occurrence noted in news accounts of the speech. Federal News Service, a private organization, transcribed the boos, shouts and cheers, along with the president's struggle to deliver his lines:
[PRESIDENT BUSH]: I've come to highlight what works, so others around the country, if they're interested in --
MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE: (Chanting.) (Inaudible.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: -- if you're interested --
MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE: (Chanting.) (Inaudible.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: -- if you're interested in doing what is right to encourage your citizens to become involved -- (chanting continues from the audience) -- and so I want to thank the city of Knoxville, Tennessee, for showing Americans -- (chanting continues from the audience) -- for showing Americans how best to help their communities. (Cheers, applause.)
The official White House transcript made no mention of the hecklers or Bush's false starts.
The opposition sees a Soviet-style move to airbrush infelicitous phrases. "These transcripts are done for near-term history as well as long-term history and it's a real problem if they start rewriting them," said Joe Lockhart, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton. "The White House is rewriting history."
Lockhart said the Clinton administration never cleaned up transcripts except to correct spelling, but veteran correspondents recall the practice occurring in both Democratic and GOP administrations. Lockhart's predecessor, Mike McCurry, said he gave White House stenographers "some leeway" to repair verbal abuses, including the task of "restoring 'g' to the English language" when Clinton's accent deleted the sound.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers routinely "revise and extend" their remarks in the Congressional Record.
Still, lawmakers do not benefit from the sort of real-time foot-noting available to a president. In Missouri last month, Bush expressed his desire for "making the death tax permanent." The White House transcript placed an asterisk next to the blooper and a footnote saying "should read 'death tax repeal.' "
In February, Bush baffled some listeners when he said he had spoken with the Japanese prime minister about "the devaluation issue" and told Japan's parliament the United States and Japan had been allies "for a century and a half." Asterisks in the official transcript indicated Bush meant to say "deflation" and "half a century."
The most public allegation of transcript sanitizing was last September, when White House press secretary Ari Fleischer warned that Americans "need to watch what they say." The phrase did not at first appear in the White House transcript.
The White House stenographers are respected professionals employed by a private contractor. Marshall Jorpeland of the National Court Reporters Association said the stenographers would not independently veer from verbatim. "When people hire us they expect a word-for-word account," he said. "In terms of cleaning it up on their own, I don't think they'd do that without that being the guidance."
So are Bush aides providing "guidance"?
White House spokeswoman Anne Womack noted that the transcripts have at times included hecklers and Bush-coined words such as "misunderestimated." "We view the transcripts as a historical record of the presidency," she said. "We expect accuracy and commend the stenographers for their excellent work."
Cleaning quotes can be hazardous. Recently, a White House transcript had Bush talking about stock options that "earn the money," when in fact the president had correctly used the Wall Street jargon "in the money." The confusion prompted an incorrect news report that Bush was shifting policy. In this case, Bush was better left unscrubbed.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
Of course its wrong (Score:2, Informative)
If they want to add more information or change the view of the story than what they should do is:
1) Post a short summary while they still don't know all the facts.
2) On the same page, but clearly timestamped, the later facts or views.
This would allow news sites to keep their integrity and change their minds. Also, the internet is a fluid medium, the old rules of printing on paper don't apply. Dynamic stories probably take more effort but are in the end more satisfying.
At least I understand now why the offical citation for the internet includes the time downloaded to the closest second.
Oh really? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oh really? (Score:2)
Slashdot. Pot. Kettle. Black. Rinse. Repeat.
This is good, but I ask that the Slashdot community choose a new fashionable catch phrase, such as "ad nauseum" or "until the cows come home", for this week.
Re:Oh really? (Score:2)
Not to toot slashdot's horn, but when slashdot screws up, they tend to admit it.
Plus I bet they've never edited a story to make it more fairly balanced. If anything, they'd edit it to make it more anti-microsoft.
TV vs Newspaper (Score:5, Insightful)
CNN obviously sees the web as a translation of their TV news business, rather than as a translation of a print-news wire service business, so to them it seems fine! To them the web is a transient medium, like TV, not a fixed medium like print.
Of course, at first glance this seems fine, until linking of stories factors into the equation.
Of course, there are technological solutions to this, but getting CNN to adopt them could be a challenge, because it means converting them from a TV mindset to a print mindset.
Re:TV vs Newspaper (Score:2)
Re:TV vs Newspaper (Score:2, Insightful)
What's the problem? (Score:2)
At the end of the day if a given source provide their take on a story then that's their take. Whether their first take, last take or whatever best matches your own views seems irrevelant.
If there any indication that a bews source changed it's story due to outside pressure than that would of course affect their credibility, but you'd be naieve not to think that there were biases, angles and prudent decisions built into the way any story is reported.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a big deal to after-news sites.
Until 9/11, CNN was different... (Score:5, Informative)
Prior to the immediately-updating news requirements caused by the 9/11 attacks, CNN had a very reasonable method for dealing with this.
The initial story created had an URL like http://www.cnn.com/2000/books/news/07/07/harrypot
A very good system IMO which allowed one to link to a specific version of an article, and allowed the reader to see the progress and revisions of a story if they were smart enough to notice the numbers at the top. As long as their internal database stayed up to date, the front page always linked to the latest version.
During and after 9/11, articles were updated so frequently that the major stories (on all news sites) became "newest information" pages rather than articles per-se. Since then, I've noticed hardly any articles posted using the old systems, with revisions now being made in place.
CNN please bring back the old method! It made sense and was a fair method of dealing with this issue!
Re:Until 9/11, CNN was different... (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at CNN.com from 1998-2001. The main newsroom was staffed 24 hours a day in 8 hour shifts. Each shift set up a rundown their top stories and coverage. Frequently a top story would get a full rewrite for each shift (02, 03, etc) while other times it would just be freshened with a new intro and possibly new pictures but the same url.
And CNN.com policy was to put a new timestamp on a story if you changed ANYTHING.
Yahoo still does versioning on wire stories (Score:2)
From the current "World News" Reuters feed (no, I'm not going to bother making this a link):
Israel mideast story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto
Which superceded the previous version:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&nci
Notice the "2065" and "2063" at the end of the URL. Those are version numbers. Does make you wonder what happened to 2064, it comes up "not found" at yahoo.
But some services still do that.
You know what they say about the Internet... (Score:2, Funny)
So what's the problem, again? (Score:4, Insightful)
I read both versions. The first was skewed heavily towards the performance of one witness in the trial.
The second was a much more well-reasoned discussion of the case as a whole vs. one tiny piece of it.
So what's the problem? The second story seems to be better-written and easier to read, and contains more information.
It's not like they changed the facts of the story; just the scope and the level of detail.
As an aside, does anyone else find it funny that a site that claims to be "News for Nerds", yet claims they shouldn't be handle to any journalistic standards, thinks that they have the right to call other news services on minor issues like this? At least those folks are trying.
More disturbing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More disturbing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, in hindsight it looks like the bin Laden story on 9/8 was EXTREMELY important. But don't forget that 9/11 hadn't happened yet! We've known about bin Laden for years, we've known that he is capable of dastardly deeds. This didn't prevent the embassy bombings, it didn't prevent the attack on the USS Cole, it didn't prevent the 9/11 hijackings, and just knowing about certain terrorists existence won't prevent future attacks. So someday something bad will happen, and you'll point back to [insert a date here] when [insert FBI memo/news story/etc here] seems extremely prescient. But in fact it wasn't because there are dozens of other dates and memos that contained similar but inaccurate warnings.
Whew. Sorry, got a little offtopic there, but recent news stories have gotten me going. I'll stop now.
Re:More disturbing...YOU ARE AN ANTI-SEMITE (Score:2)
Uh, because he is a stupid, fucking anti-semitic asshole that hates Western Culture and America with a passion because no one gives a shit about his narrow minded, hate based dialogue. If it were not for the US liberal colleges, the man wouldn't know how to earn a living or even feed himself. Chompsky is up there with the David Dukes and Louis Farahkans in our society. Nothing more than a hateful racist with a small following of whacked out, bigoted idiots.
Re:More disturbing... (Score:2)
Re:More disturbing... (Score:2)
But since you seem to know so much about Chomsky, perhaps you can point us to one of his book or conference in which he advocates the "destruction" of the U.S. to you? Or perhaps advocating any kind of profound reform is wanting to "destroy the U.S. in it's current form"?
From a propagandist's point of view, your choice of word is quite telling, if a bit too obvious to be credible: "destroy" vs. "reform", "change" or even "improve". Pff...amateur!
Re:More disturbing... (Score:3, Interesting)
Boy, what an argument! I'm speechless!! If it makes you feel any better, I thing you're full of crap too. But, as usual with conservatives who badmouth Chomsky, you won't try to prove him wrong - just call him a liar or weak debater or whatever. But I never see anyone actually trying to challenge one of his arguments...strange...
And I really would like to see him ripped to shreds as he deserves in a fair and open and widely publicised debate.
Yesterday I was looking again at the interview dear old William F. Buckley did of him in the 60's. Someone got ripped to shreds all right, but it wasn't Chomsky. It's actually painful to watch. At some point I though that Buckley would just burst into tears and storm out of the studio. Pathetic.
And in the case of Chomsky - he may have a point, but it's weak, and supported by a lot of left wing propaganda and lies.
Actually, the great thing about Chomsky is that he always gives his sources to support his arguments (in his books, at least). So you can always go and check for yourself. And you know what? Often the sources are traditional, "respected" (and by that I mean "corporate") media. Again, it's not enough to say that it's based on "left-wing propaganda and lies", you have to prove it. Otherwise you're just indulging in propaganda yourself. As I said, if he is so full of crap - as you and about every other conservative like to say - then prove him wrong with the same diligence and seriousness as he uses in his political writing. Otherwise your argument won't carry much weight, I'm afraid.
Re:More disturbing... (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, the U.S. did commit acts which by its own standards would be considered terrorism, IMO. Chief amongst them would be the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They could have just vaporized one of the many uninhabited islands surrounding Japan (after inviting some Generals to check out the actual drop) and the effect would have pretty much been the same. At least it would have given the Japanese a chance to think it over while sparing the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, including children and the elderly. Well, it still would have been terrorism (which is the use of force or violence to coerce a civilian population for political or military ends), but at least some civilian lives could have been spared.
Happens a lot in sport stories (Score:2)
It's a common practice in sport websites that provide live coverage, like the one I frequent most, Sportsline.com [sportsline.com] that the lead story is often written and rewritten during the course of a live game, depending on how it progresses. That's sometimes the price you have for near-real-time news.
Re:Happens a lot in sport stories (Score:2)
If the article has a line close to the header saying "this article is being updated as we follow the story" or something like that, then nobody would reasonably expect to be able to go back to it later and find the same static content.
The issue is being predictable. If I'm told a story will likely change I will save a copy if there is something in it I want to preserve.
Similarly, if CNN just says on their pages "our stories are regularly changed without notice when new information becomes available" I would just not rely on anything on the CNN site for reference.
The web is close to print media in some ways and close to broadcast media in other ways, and that causes confusion to readers. The least the news site operators could do is to inform their readers on how they are handling updates so that readers can make informed choices about what level of trust to place in a particular source.
Congratulations Roblimo and Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Actual research was done by a slashdot employee for this article. Roblimo actually took the time to call a CNN employee and allow them to confirm/deny the allegations at hand.
(2) Roblimo doesnt appear to jump to any "off the wall" conspiracy conclusions as some editors here have been known to do. He leaves that for the comment posters to do
(3) The article is very balanced all in all. I think Roblimo is attempting to present both sides of the story and give the reader a chance to make up his own mind. Now that is true journalism.
In short thank your Roblimo for helping to raise the bar here at
J
Re:Congratulations Roblimo and Thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
The majority of /. stories are links to news, features, rumors, innuendo, etc. originating elsewhere on the web. Some links are to legitimate news stories and others are less so. The "editors" merely post links that they find interesting and add their own purely subjective opinions (they've never claimed to be objective). Then we all comment and discuss amongst ourselves.
The only /. stories that are actually original journalism are the features [slashdot.org], including this one by Roblimo and, yes, JonKatz's articles. So if it's real journalism you want, read JonKatz.
hear hear (Score:2)
Even Slashdot is guilty of this (*GASP!*) (Score:2)
Re:Even Slashdot is guilty of this (*GASP!*) (Score:2)
Newspapers Change (Score:4, Informative)
Many papers (larger ones) have a series of runs that are printed at varying times. There are also often local editions. Thus I may get the early-am run and you might get the late morning one. Or I may get the downtown edition and you the suburban.
Any of these papers might vary from the others. The story "Sun Rises" might become "Sun Rises Brightly". Or it might be replaced with "Grass Grows" or something else completely different.
No, what you've read or clipped out doesn't magically go back and erase or rewrite itself but it is also quite possibly not the same as everyone else in the classroom / office / nursing home read.
I agree a versioning system would be great for newpspers. Heck, many (incl. large ones like the Boston Globe) lack stable URLS for daily stories for the move from current to archived.
I also respect that this additionial material would be likely disturb readers who prefer their news solid and immutable and would be unhappy to see the changes a story they're reading has gone through. Seeing how the facts evolve and the wroters tone changes, perhaps dramatically.
And yes there is the problem of links pointing to stale versions of a story, the extra material to be stored, indexed, & archived, etc.
Versioning is a good idea and one I've heard brought up many times but to date the practice seems to follow the print style. Declare the last edition of a run the definitive one, the final version of a story the actual story.
Not the first time... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the deal? (Score:2, Informative)
They do this on slashdot all the time. I kept the original article on slashdot about the September 11 attacks up for a few days because it had changed so much. The original seemed to express more shock than the final version.
Versioning on the web (Score:2)
I hacked up a little perl script [splorg.org] demonstrating the idea. Now each of my web pages can have a "this page contains version information" link to its changelog.
And then there's VMS which has versioning built into the filesystem...
Re:Versioning on the web (Score:2)
That's a great tool. Unfortunately, it has to be run on the server side, which means that the server operator can override it whenever they want to change the past. I think a secure solution has to be client-side.
Maybe we need web.archive.org or something like that to continually archive major news sources and diff them, keeping all diffs that they find. Then it would be possible to look at the evolution of the story over time, whether the original publisher likes it or not.
I fail to see what the big deal is. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I fail to see what the big deal is. (Score:2)
Take for example this analysis of the Chavez reporting from the Associate Press [emperors-clothes.com]. They totally changed the story. [Read that link..it's actually quite damning]
It's not wrong, but it's not good (Score:2)
First of all, there's no reason you can't fetch yourself a copy of a story in the morning, and then read it whenever you want, refer back to it on a later date, compare it with a later edition, etc. In fact, if anything prevented this, we wouldn't have this article. It's not like you can call up a newspaper and ask them to print you yesterday's paper. If you want to see yesterday's paper, you look at a copy produced by the company yesterday, achived by you or someone else. It's not the news people's job to write history; it's their job to write current events. As things change, it's not their job to tell you about the past.
Should they mark updates? Yes, but for the same reason that slashdot marks them: it is a disservice to people who read the original or people the original was unfavorable to if the new version is not marked as such, because people won't reread the article, and will not know about the new information.
funnily enough (Score:2)
It's funny the way we're ending up with a de facto, distributed Big Brother. Life eh.
Minor or major issue? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's say that a writer for WSJ reports that Cisco has done major cuts to it's overhead in a story three days ago. If you invest in Cisco, this would peque your interest. You might even realize that the primary way companies have cut overhead is to get rid of either part of their development team, or part of their support team. Either solution may provide you the impetus to sell part of your stock, as they both lead you to the conclusion that they have made a short term profit decision that will negatively impact long term results.
A day later Cisco reports a major increase in profits as a result of their decision to cut overhead. The stock jumps 18% the next day.
You decide to go take a look at the story again, and find that now the URL returns a story by a different author with glowing reports of the profitability of the company.
If you sold your stock before the quarterly results posted, you took a major hit on the potential for your earnings for the stock. The new story does not support your decision. The decision to sell was yours, but it was guided by a story that you can't find anymore, and because of the newspaper's guidelines stating that it is ok to "revise without notification" stories on-line, you are left holding the bag, and even more skeptical of what you read online.
There are only two possible solutions to this that I can see. Either the online newspapers take responsibility and provide notification to the readers that the stories they may be relying upon have been updated, or some tool needs to be developed that will allow a user to flag stories for monitoring that will notify them if the story has been updated.
Unfortunately either will impact the newspaper's bandwidth.
Then again, I don't own stock in Cisco, (though I should get some) so at the moment such a story would not directly impact me.
-Rusty
Excellent story, Roblimo. (Score:2)
Excellent story, Roblimo. Really good story.
I will certainly trust CNN less.
The subhead of the CNN story is "MIT professor takes stand again after fumbling answers as states' attorney grilled him Wednesday." I will trust MIT less, also. Someone who is thinking of applying to MIT should perhaps re-consider their choice. How many other professors there would participate in an attempt to mislead the Court?
Re:Excellent story, Roblimo. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not a deliberate act, just like the MIT Prof in question's fumble wasn't deliberate, either. Simply put, this professor was a bad witness. Smart guy, bad witness. He got flustered and stumbled over his words. This does not make him a liar.
And if you're suggesting that someone not attend MIT just because one professor likes Microsoft, you're an ignorant git and should be hit by a bus, fall on a soup spoon, get cancer and die.
Level of intelligence to be expected at MIT? (Score:2)
If that is the level of intelligence to be expected at MIT, then be afraid of paying them good money to go there. Remember, where there are ignorant people there are likely to be more ignorant people.
It was not the fumbling that was an attempt to mislead the Court. It was the attempt to mislead the Court that was an attempt to mislead the Court.
The biggest difference between... (Score:4, Informative)
This cnn business sounds more like changing the story beacuse of editorial pressue.
thats what you get... (Score:2)
Google to the rescue? (Score:2)
Remember June 2001? (Score:2)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/24/22462
Wouldn't it be nice if... (Score:2)
This is particularly hard to deal with if there was a single point or phrase I wanted to convey that later was edited out.
At the very least, there should be a "View older versions" link so you can see the revisions made. Even if they had some disclaimer that there was newer information at another location (that was linked as well).
washingtonpost.com (Score:4, Informative)
Permanence in URL's: It's got to be the media's promise to everyone.
Ethical Journalism (Score:3, Interesting)
Modifying an article after publication is acceptable -- and it's a Good Thing if the revision fixes errors or omissions.
Modifying an article and not telling anyone is a Bad Thing called a "lie."
A case in point: Yesterday, I posted a benchmark comparison [coyotegulch.com] of Intel's "non-commercial" C++ compiler and gcc. Several people gave me suggestions for improving gcc's performance, and I updated the article today -- with clearly marked additions and explanations of what changed and why. That's journalism on the web.
What CNET is doing is called lying.
Pipe bomb (Score:2)
Terrorists attack US with pipe bombs.
(changed)
US Pipe boomer at large.
(changed)
Father-in-law turns in pipe bomber.
Rewriting news to fit the current scope or concept of the news does an injustice to factual reporting. You need to follow a story from start to finish. If you jump to the end, you must accept someone else conclusion as facts.
*Update.
Bush wins presidency in Florida. Recount favored President elect Bush.
-
The one who writes the history books wins...
What's the big deal? And why? (Score:2)
There's no obligation for a news source to keep around old versions of their articles/broadcasts/whatever in a publically accessible form. If something in the article is wrong or incomplete, then fix it, post the corrected version, and zap the old version.
Besides, why would someone want to deliberately link to a version of the story that's deemed incorrect by the news source presenting the story? It's hard enough to get people to pay attention to corrections and retractions--why, aside from historical curiosity, should we deliberately perpetuate a flawed story?
I'd be pretty annoyed if I got all worked up over a story only to find that I was being given bad information (not that that ever happens on Slashdot, of course
Deliberately disengaging a realtime discussion thread from the most recent developments on the topic under discussion seems like a bad idea to me.
Re:What's the big deal? And why? (Score:2)
With newspapers this traditionally hasn't been an issue, since old copies are normally archived, and getting access to previous versions of a story normally wouldn't be a problem.
For TV this has always been a problem, but it isn't an issue since a TV broadcast isn't persistent - you have to make a copy (a recording) to have something to refer to in the first place.
The internet falls somewhere in between. The nature of many sites give the impression that the news reports are persistent when in fact they often are not.
This is not only a problem when referring to an article, but also when using articles as background material for other work. Without a changelog the original article and an updated article may look superficially the same, but one may contain grave errors that you'd only notice on a detailed reading.
If you go back to check on something, having a reference to a changelog should make it obvious to you that you need to check whether the change affects your use of the material.
In effect, updating an article in a way that make it seem static to users seriously reduce the value of that article for many purposes.
As others has noted, it also seriously reduce the incentive to ensure the reporting is correct. If you can gloss over your errors and blatantly wrong reporting by updating the article with practically noone noticing, you can push the publish button so much earlier, and do your proof reading and fact checking after you've beat the competition.
Personally I've frequently found gross errors on news sites I read that has silently been corrected when I've pointed them out - in one case an article had completely confused two different people involved in two completely different trials, resulting in an article that had nothing to with reality. In that case the article was just pulled, but no errata was published.
A reader that went back to their site later would indeed not find the story any more, but on the other hand they would find no indication that the article previously there was complete and utter junk. They might keep spreading the errors in talking to people and writing about the article because the site did not have enough respect for their readers to inform them of the error.
This was from the online edition of a news paper that in its paper edition always publish erratas when errors are brought to their attention.
No Conspiracy Here, The Web's A Dynamic Medium (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's How It Works
Unless things have changed drastically since I worked there, there are half a dozen people in Arlington, VA right now who spend the majority of their day watching the wire services for updates, posting updated stories and sometimes adding information (in which case the byline is changed to something to the effect of "Compiled from staff and wire reports").
Some stories may be updated five times or more in a single day, but many get stale before they can be updated so the Post stops linking to them. A classic case of a story that is constantly updated is the market summary. AP and Reuters run this story each morning and update it as things develop (updates include a new snapshot of the Dow and the Nasdaq, highlight any major announcements/reports that may have affected the tide of the markets, etc.) about once an hour, IIRC.
If the Post expects people will be following a particular story throughout the day, the site will highlight the fact that it's been updated. Any time they update a story, they change the time stamp. If you're following a story, take note of the time stamp and you'll always know if you're looking at an updated version (I'm sure Slashdot readers would prefer a changelog, but newspapers aren't software development houses and they are very resistant to change).
No Conspiracy Here
There's no conspiracy here to change facts behind your back or cover up mistakes. It's about ensuring that you always have the most up-to-date information when you visit the site. Here's the deal:
When The Washington Post is physically printed each morning, it's distributed to hundreds of thousands of locations. Some quickly find their way to recycling bins and trash cans, but others may sit in people's offices or homes for months. More importantly, libraries archive the papers and they are provided to the public indefinitely as reference material.
The Web, OTOH, is a dynamic medium where few things have a long shelf life. Most content on washingtonpost.com is no longer linked to within 24 hours, and the actual HTML page disappears after two weeks unless it's designated as long-term content. The searchable archives consist of stories that have been printed in the physical paper, and if a change is made to a print edition article, it is noted with a correction.
And now you know enough about the online news biz to get a part-time job updating the news digest. All that remains is some basic HTML knowledge and a tutorial about proprietary Web publishing systems (news judgment skills optional).
Archive.org tracks content changes (Score:2)
This is not unique to "online" media (Score:2)
There was an article called "Why does the Associated Press change it's articles?" in _You_Are_Being_Lied_To_ from Disinfo press. The manipulation of articles after release has been occuring since before the first online media stand opened it's doors.
A quote:
On July 5, 2000, AP released two versions of an article about the European Parliament voting to expand its probe into Echelon, the US-based communications-eavesdropping network that monitors phone calls, faxes, and email worldwide. At 5:33 PM, the headline read, "European Parliament Votes for Wider Probe Into US Spying." The hammer must've come down awfully fast, because when the second version of the article was put on the wire at 6:14 PM, the headline had been softened considerably: "Europe Votes for Wider Probe of Alleged U.S. Spy Network." Ah, so now the spying is merely "alleged." And, more subtly, it's not even US "spying" anymore-it's just a "spy network." They may or may not be actively spying, but the network is there. Allegedly.
In case you people haven't been paying attention, the readers of the newspapers and other media are not the customers. They are the product, and they are being sold to the advertisers. The advertisers themselves are the customers - they pay for the paper (what you pay doesn't cover the cost of the paper, much less provide any profit). And since the customer is always right, the press is happy to change it's articles for them, or even for the government.
The common rebuttal to this is some kind of petulant namby-pamby whining about freedom of the press. The people who decide what goes in the press are high, high up in the heirarchy. You don't rise to those positions unless you've proven yourself to be the kind of slick manipulator whose first priority is keeping the advertisers, and whose second priority is luring in readers. Printing the truth or having any level of integrity is twenty-second priority, just after priority twenty-one, keeping a steady supply of cocaine, priority twenty, getting rid of subordinates who might get you in trouble, and priority ninteen, having a good retirement package.
Re:This is not a newspaper (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is not a newspaper (Score:2)
Re:This is not a newspaper (Score:4, Interesting)
I've Been Stung Too Many Times (Score:2, Informative)
Whenever I find an interesting story that I want to send to a friend, I always cut and paste the story into an email address rather than giving them the URL. Why? Because I've been stung one too many times by reading a version 1.0 of an article, telling my friends about it and my reaction to it, and then having them complain that my comments were off base. I double check the story and, whatta-ya-know, the story has been changed to version 1.1 so that my comments do seem pretty off base, NOW. So then I have to explain to my friend that the original story had a different tone and so on and so forth. And lord knows whether my friends believe me or think I'm making excuses.
I suppose that by doing a cut-and-paste of the article that I'm violating the copyright but I just don't trust online news sources to preserve an article between the time I read it and my friend gets around to seeing it.
The thing that pisses me off the most is when I catch a obvious error in an article and send an email to the website informing them of this. I figure it takes me a minute to do and will help hundreds or thousands of other people who will read the article after me. Usually the error gets corrected between the time that I send my message and someone reads my correction. So you can guess what happens next: I get a condescending response telling me that I am in error and that I should double check the article. That's usually about the time that I quit reading that website and look for another source of news...
GMD
Why is suiing always the answer? (Score:2)
Re:This is not a newspaper (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you look at the story that's still there :
ThreeHamsWillKillHim writes "Apparently, it's rumored that actor James Doohan, from Star Trek fame, is in a coma." The article notes that he's not likely to come out of it. James Doohan is 82 and is known best for his role as Engineer Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek.
Basically, the record of Slashdot's original comment is still there. They did however change the headline - which I presume was to stop thousands of people posting "No he's not." or "Oh my god!" unnecessarily. The line isn't exactly blurred in these matters : You have to keep a record that you were originally wrong, and then add an update. Changing the headline can be interpreted as dubious though, although in the case it's just confusing as the headline is contradicted by the story, and then the story is contradicted by the update. Personally I think the change of headline should be noted along with the update.
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? I haven't seen this before. Have any links to specific articles?
How many times have we seen articles mystically updated and changed here without any mention of the revision on the actual article?
Everytime a slashdot article is updated by the editors there is a bold faced UPDATE notice with a timestamp next to it, such as in this article [slashdot.org]. It seems obvious to me that they are trying to inform readers when an article changes.
I mean they actually posted 6 Anti Microsoft stories in a SINGLE day on Monday.
What does that have to do with anything?
Personal attacks on the slashdot editors do you no good. You don't have to read it if you don't want to.
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2, Offtopic)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2)
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2, Offtopic)
The infamous moderation investigation thread springs to mind. Perhaps you're unaware. A user set up multiple accounts, used some for trolling, some for posting pro linux crap, some for other stuff. He kept track of how fast he accumulated karma and what he accumulated it for. He posted a well written summary. There were hundreds of responses. The post was moderated hundreds of times (informative, insightful, offtopic, troll). Everyone who moderated it up permanently lost moderation access.
Check the SLASH source. There's a "bitchslap" program that moderates all of a users's posts down to -1. Jaime has admitted to having used it.
That's not true. Sometimes they post the Update. Sometimes they silently edit the article text. Sometimes they yank the article from the frontpage entirely. Browse at -1 sometime, and you'll probably see an early poster quoting the text and pointing out how inaccurate it is, but the text was silently changed.
Read the Fucking FAQ (Score:3, Offtopic)
From the
"The Slashdot Editors have unlimited mod points, and we have no problem using them." [slashdot.org]
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Even better, this thread is now locked so you can no longer post to it.
There were MANY insightful comments in that thread, but the editors chose to -1 all of it anyway, in effect "revising" history; their excuse being that the thread was "offtopic". Interesting isn't it? Some of the *best* discussions on
The reason *that* particular thread was bitchslapped is abundantly clear. Go read it for yourself, and decide.
And if *THIS* post is deemed offtopic by the editors, you can bet on me losing whatever respect I had left for
Sure, bitchslapping isn't OUTRIGHT censorship, but enough people assume (like the parent poster) that the editors don't mod on such a virulent, malicious scale that in effect, a -1 is almost as bad as real censorship, given the number of us that *DEPEND* on the readership's judgement on what is a good post and what isn't. If what
Re:This is fairly amusing... (Score:2)
if you really want to see the inner workings the slashdot staff will not reveal to you, you must visit here. [slashdot.org]
Or read the FULLY OPEN source code.
Re:I've seen slashdot do it! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I've seen slashdot do it! (Score:2)
Re:I've seen slashdot do it! (Score:3, Funny)
Newspeak dictionary (Score:2)
Here's a Newspeak dictionary [newspeakdictionary.com].
Newspeak may have been inspired by Basic English [basiceng.com] or Esperanto [esperanto.net]. Contrary to the opinion of some, Toki Pona [tokipona.org] was not inspired by Newspeak.
Re:One who controls the past, controls the future. (Score:2)
Re:One who controls the past, controls the future. (Score:2)
Re:One who controls the past, controls the future. (Score:2)
If updated comments had an easily visible line saying "UPDATED - [link to previous version, and timestamp of update]", then it would not be a big issue that it had changed. People could clearly see that the comment had been changed and that the change had been done after several of the replies had been posted, and if something didn't make sense they could go and have a look at the original version.
That is the core issue: Whether you tell your readers about updates or not. Whether you are updating stories in place or not is a cosmetic issue that doesn't really matter if you make it clear that updates have been made and either archive old versions or post a changelog.
Re:Even the headline and byline changed... (Score:2)