The journalism establishment has not taken seriously my insistence that we regard linking as an essential practice of ethical journalism.
Poynter ignored my advice in adopting its new Guiding Principles for the Journalist last year and the Society of Professional Journalists brushed aside my advice in adopting its new Code of Ethics. The New York Times perhaps never heard or read my advice, but it certainly doesn’t require linking to digital sources of information. Update: I have done a related follow-up post on the Times’ linking policy and practice.
But, if the Times required linking, it would have avoided this embarrassing — no, humiliating — correction on Friday’s “I Was Misinformed” column by Joyce Wadler:
An earlier version of this column was published in error. That version included what purported to be an interview that Kanye West gave to a Chicago radio station in which he compared his own derrière to that of his wife, Kim Kardashian. Mr. West’s quotes were taken, without attribution, from the satirical website The Daily Currant. There is no radio station WGYN in Chicago; the interview was fictitious, and should not have been included in the column.
You may not have known that The Daily Currant is a satirical website. That’s forgivable. The site is not as well-known as The Onion, but it’s kind of an Onion wannabe.
Of course, the actual quotes that the columnist lifted from the Currant have been removed, but here are the West “quotes” from the Currant story:
“I don’t understand why everyone is focusing on Kim’s booty.” he said. “Obviously I love her ass. That’s why I married her. But nobody has an ass like mine. I have one of the top three asses of all time.
“My booty is like Michelangelo level, you feel me? It’s like a sculpture. It’s like something that should be sitting in a museum for thousands of thousands of years. Kim? She’s got a nice ass. But it’s not at that level.
“The media hates me. That’s why they’re ignoring my butt, and putting all their attention on Kim’s. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.” …
“All I’m saying is that comparing my ass to Kim’s ass is like comparing a Ferrari to a Mercedes. It’s not like a Mercedes is a bad car. But it’s no Ferrari.”
I’m really curious which quotes she used and why they didn’t set off alarms with the columnist or Times editors. Update: See the screenshot at the end of this post to see how the Times used the quotes.
I’ve been sucked in by pranks before. I get that. I’m not saying that everyone at the Times should be so smart that they never initially mistake satire for truth.
For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll set aside the lifting of the quotes from the Currant without attribution, though that raises serious ethical questions. The Currant was purporting to be a secondary source, quoting from a radio interview. I agree with the practice of attributing quotes to their original sources, so the column was right to attribute them to WGYN rather than the Currant, but only after going to WGYN to check out the quotes.
If the Times required linking to sources, the columnist would have needed to go to WGYN’s website and get the link (or ideally, an audio or video clip to embed). And maybe by the time she typed WGYN into a search engine and didn’t find an actual radio station, she might take a second look at those call letters and laugh. And she might look at those quotes again and laugh a little more.
And she might click the clearly marked “about” page on the Daily Currant’s site and learn that it calls itself a “satirical” site and heave a sigh of relief that the Times’ policy on links saved her from humiliation.
You should link in digital content to your digital sources of information because that’s the best way to attribute. Even when you’re not falling for a prank, linking provides depth and context as well as authenticity. (If the Times only used a couple of those quotes, and this was a real story I cared about, I could click the link and read the rest of the quotes.)
You should link in digital content to your digital sources because the requirement that you link might prompt you to look into your sources a bit more and be more confident in them.
But, as I pointed out after the Manti Te-o hoax was exposed last year, an expectation of linking can force reporters to do a little more work and sometimes expose the lies of their sources. And, as the Times now knows, linking to sources can also protect you from the gullibility of your own staff members.
I hope when Public Editor Margaret Sullivan is finished investigating this fiasco that she recommends the Times adopt a practice of linking to digital sources. It’s not only good journalism; it prevents bad journalism.
I’ll invite Wadler to respond to this post and add her reply if she does.
And here’s a public service to journalists:
The Daily Currant is a humor site. Nothing there is true. Don’t ever cite it unless you are writing about the satire.
The Onion is a humor site. Nothing there is true. Don’t ever cite it unless you are writing about the satire.
The Daily Show is a comedy show. They actually have a lot of factual clips and information, but it’s mixed with comedy and jokes that aren’t really true. Don’t ever cite it without acknowledging that it’s comedy.
The New Yorker’s Borowitz Report is humor. It publishes things that are exaggerated or untrue. Don’t ever cite it unless you are writing about the satire.
Update: Thanks to Sue Burzynski Bullard for grabbing this screenshot from the Wayback Machine, showing how the Times used the quotes (note the effort to avoid using the word “ass”):
Correction: I initially misspelled the Times columnist’s name in this post.
Don’t forget National Report, which is also a wholly fictitious news site, and seems to be not so much trying to be funny as to really deceive people, to harvest clicks.
LikeLike
Thanks! Haven’t seen that one. Some friends on Twitter were suggesting the same about The Daily Currant. But I think anyone using WGYN as a radio station is only trying to deceive really stupid people.
LikeLike
Good points Steve, although nothing prevents individual journalists from adopting this practice for themselves while waiting for their bosses to catch up.
Also, uploading source documents into Document Cloud and linking to them, and to specific portions you are using, not only helps readers interested in learning more about subject, but also helps you find them later on if you’ve misplaced them…:) ….Not that I would ever do that….
LikeLike
Thanks for helping the world sort itself out–there is often a narrow gap between humor and ‘truth’ in the field (chasm?) of modern day journalism.
LikeLike
[…] must correct, or expand upon, something I posted earlier today. In writing about an absurd correction in the New York Times, I wrote that the Times “certainly doesn’t require linking to digital sources of […]
LikeLike
[…] said that here in two posts on Nov. 24. Big deal, I rail about linking all the time, and Society of Professional […]
LikeLike
[…] An embarrassing Times correction (later named correction of the year) prompted a post about why journalists should link (nearly 2,500 views); a follow-up post about links being a matter of ethics, not just […]
LikeLike
[…] Times did follow a bit of my advice later last year, when I called on it to a better job of linking, and got a bit of response, not from Baquet, but from Standards Editor Phil Corbett and Editor for […]
LikeLike
[…] noted last year how the Times’ refusal to require links to digital sources caused an embarrassing error. After Patrick LaForge, the Times’ Editor for News Presentation, responded noting that links […]
LikeLike
[…] Requiring links to sources can keep you from falling for pranks […]
LikeLike
[…] faulted the Times this summer and last November (twice) for its weak and inconsistent use of links for attribution and context. But I also praised […]
LikeLike