Media Curmudgeon

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November 07, 2007

NY Times Public Editor—Bad Reporting

The New York Times’ Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, wrote a column on Sunday, November 4, titled “Civil Discourse, Meet the Internet," in which he claimed, “How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways?

The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.
The issue is timely because last week, with very little notice, The Times took baby steps toward letting readers comment on its Web site about news articles and editorials…”

You got your facts wrong, Mr. Public Editor. Do you read your own newspaper online? On October 12 (not “last week”), I wrote the following:
“At about 9:00 a.m. this morning the lead story on the NY Times’ website was ‘Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize for Climate Work,’ and just to the right a picture of a man holding a big picture of Al Gore with the caption, ‘Above, the chairman of the Nobel Committee.’ Directly underneath, in larger, bold blue type, was ‘Comment by Benjamin Toresco: ‘Discredits the Nobel Prize...who will be next year, Michael Moore?’ About forty minutes later the comment had been updated; the new one by Richard Sypher read, ‘The Nobel Committee continues its efforts of rewarding left-wing alarmists.’

I think posting these negative comments points out a huge dilemma for the Times and other online news content providers. What was the Times attempting to communicate by posting these comments and what did it communicate? Is posting comments to the lead story a good idea or a bad idea? My first reaction to the ‘Discredits the Nobel Prize’ comment was outrage. How could the Times give front-web page attention to a wingnut? How could the Times give credence to such crap?

So I went to the Comments page to see for myself. When I checked it at about 9:40 a.m., there were 258 comments. A large majority of them were favorable—praising Gore and the Nobel Committee. But many were negative, such as the comments mentioned above. One by Jack was, ‘Who is Al Gore. Never heard of him. George Bush should have won the peace prize. ‘Peace Through Strength.’ Or, ‘Al Gore is a fake. I cannot believe a person with such disregard for the truth could win this award,’ by Harold Majors. I was aghast. How long had these people been living in the state of Denial, clearly America’s 51st state?”

You also wrote in your column, Mr. Hoyt, “On Tuesday, readers were invited to comment on a single article in Science Times and on the paper’s top editorial, using a link that accompanied each. Few did because there was no promotion of the change, but as the week went on and more articles were opened to comment, participation picked up.”

Picked up last week? There were at least 258 comments on the Gore story on October 12, many by conservative wingnuts, so how does this compute with what you wrote in your Public Editor's column, “A particularly hot topic on a blog can generate more than 500 comments — 500, that is, that meet guidelines requiring that a comment be coherent, on point, not obscene or abusive, and not a personal attack.” There were dozens of personal attacks on Al Gore on October the 12th that The Times allowed on the website, and to which I objected in my blog titled, “NY Times’ Front Page Wingnut Deniers.”

You wrote, “From Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, on down, executives and editors of The Times use similar language to describe their goal: they want the newspaper’s Web site to nurture a healthy, “civil discourse” on the topics of the day.” I agree, but the comments on October 12th did not come close to reaching that goal—too many wingnut deniers.

I’m delighted The Times is allowing comments, as they often do lead to a richer civil discourse, and I appreciate The Times’ editors’ dilemmas in editing comments. I also appreciate what you do—trying to keep The Times reporting truthful and fair. I suggest you apply those same standards to yourself and read your paper online so that you know when an editor is not being accurate in telling you last week was the first time for comments. I’d like to be able to trust what The Times' ombudsman writes.

Posted by Charles Warner at November 7, 2007 09:34 PM

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Media Curmudgeon at November 8, 2007 11:26 PM writes:

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