One of the many wonders of the internet age is the speed with which information can be spread. Which begs the question why just after 1pm today Tim Blair was peddling a story about an apparently inflammatory ad produced by the WWF, when a cursory search would have revealed that the ad was neither requested nor approved by the WWF.
According to the WWF
… it was a concept offered by an outside advertising agency seeking our business in Brazil. The concept was summarily rejected by WWF and should never have seen the light of day.
which doesn’t quite seem to match Tim’s suggestion of
ENVIRONMENTALISTS LOSING IT
Surely in a highly competitive news environment, where media proprietors are looking to offer content valuable enough that consumers will pay to view it on-line, accuracy needs to be one of the cornerstones of the value proposition?
34 Comments
Similar story in relation to an “MoveOn.org advertisement depicting bush as hitler”. It gets trotted out a fair bit by reps, but it never actually happened. A user submitted such an ad to a move-on web site as an entry to some sort of competition, and moveon took it off the site. They never commissioned it or broadcast it.
“Surely in a highly competitive news environment, where media proprietors are looking to offer content valuable enough that consumers will pay to view it on-line, accuracy needs to be one of the cornerstones of the value proposition?”
Tim’s boss, Newscorp CEO John Hartigan agrees wholeheartedly.
“In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart. Blogs and a large number of comment sites specialise in political extremism and personal vilification.
Radical sweeping statements unsubstantiated with evidence are common.”
Blair’s blog dovetails and locksteps SO well into Hartigan’s brave new/old world of accuracy … or not?
Really Dave this is precisely one of those developing stories which is bizarre/amusing and contains almost no commentary for criticism from Tim Blair at all, in fact he acknowledges in the final update that The WWF is not actually responsible and his final word “good” makes it clear that he is happy that it is not the fault of the organisation that such a tasteless ad was created in the first place.
So what precisely is wrong with the piece?
The WWF had completely denied any connection to the ad hours before Tim’s post, it was no longer “developing”.
So ? Despite your faith in instant messaging these things take a while to filter through and Tim corrected the “error”, isn’t that sort of stream of consciousness posting what Blogging is well suited to? So why is Tim being attacked here for it?
Even the first comments on the blog article note that it is bollocks.
Iain – The fact that Tim does not include any commentary does not make re-hashing the story any more meaningful? In fact it does the opposite. It shows a level of compliance with what is being stated. If he was so outraged why didn’t he say anything?
Only following it up with the “good” after it was pointed out to him by a number of people to be wrong shows {we can’t publish that – Toby}.
Sorry Toby – Should have I said Tim did not check his facts? Too quick to publish without doing a simple fact check.
Blair’s ‘correction’ doesn’t even note that he had completely failed to do his research before accusing the WWF of adopting “PETA-style shock tactics”. He simply adds it onto his post as an ‘update’ as if the information had only come to light after his original blog post.
{Sorry, the last sentence had to go – Toby}.
“Surely in a highly competitive news environment, where media proprietors are looking to offer content valuable enough that consumers will pay to view it on-line, accuracy needs to be one of the cornerstones of the value proposition?”
I don’t get your point, Dave. Are you saying accuracy is suddenly a new concept borne out of the internet age, and we had no right to expect it when we paid for a hard copy paper??
And you rather sideways imply that proprietors will be charging to read the BLOGS they host. Of course they won’t. Any savvy blogger would simply host their own elsewhere.
Dave, rule #1 in journalism written for the lowest common denominator: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
I assure you JR that we here at Pure Poison always strive for the truth. Dave
Iain, at the time Tim posted, a news search on google using the term “WWF ad” resulted in almost all of the leading results, which were 5 or 6 hours old, debunking the story and linking to the WWF’s denial. I’m not attacking Tim, the question is just being asked how the mistake was made in light of the information that was readily available?
Pedro – From my reading of what Dave said:
Why should any on line reader be expected to pay for errors through a paywall?
For that matter why should anyone expect to pay for hard copy errors as well? (Pauline Hanson nude anyone?)
Tim’s want to push the button to publish before doing a 10 second google search shows how open to fault online media can be. As an example news.com.au is still showing the now de-bunked Michale Jackson alive video. It just shows that there are a number of online media agencies (bloggers and news sites) that are lowering journalistic standards (read fact checking) to get the story published.
Accuracy with online media is in a lot of ways easier. Google searches, snopes etc make fact checking possible and easier. This blog post by Tim highlights what happens when the fact checking is not done.
Pedro, Blair mentioned here, and Andrew Bolt discussed here the fact that paywalls were coming to News Ltd. It looks like they are at least trying to test the water to see if people will pay to read their blogs.
But Its such a non story Dave, Tim is taking the piss, not making a serious point so why should be be attacked for making a joke?
My guess is TB gets the vast majority of his information from a media cocoon of Righty blogs and FNC, plus listening to US talkradio steaming live on the Internet.
Maybe a little Parrot thrown in for local flavour.
Okay, the corporate media (or MSM as Blair et al call it) has it’s flaws, but people on our ‘side’ (plus the well informed non-political) at least know how to look for nuggets of info in that morass.
IMHO while dedicated people on the Right theseadays might believe they’re being vigilant or sceptical, in truth they’re living in a perpetual 2003, believing the MSM is doing nothing but serving up concocted stories about obscure events in Iraq or the ghettoes of Paris or whatever. It’s one reason for the slow reaction time on stories like this, and for the fact that most other stories they follow are things most genuinely critical media consumers like ourselves have never even heard of, they’re so obscure. Ghettoisation in action (not Paris, but rather the modern Right’s worldview).
Another “of the many wonders of the internet age is the speed with which” DISinformation “can be spread.”
It seems to be getting worse every day too. There are some people on the internet, I won’t name them because we pretty well all know who they are, where when I read something they’ve posted, the default position I approach it from is “okay, so what kind of LIE is this we have here? How have they managed to twist the truth of this around to fit their agenda?”
Strange Days Indeed as John Lennon sang 30 years ago.
Dave, given your reply to me and your “addition” to post #10 – which I don’t think is necessary – it would appear you have a problem removing blogs from actual news.
Sure Blair and Bolt brought it up at that time and tossed it to discussion, as did countless others given it came on the heels of a highly publicised News Ltd statement. But remember, they “comment” on the news. They don’t report it.
And remember, too, Crikey had a full column DAILY dedicated to c*ckups and corrections (which I loved reading) but it appears to now be behind the “paywall”. That or it is purposely made hard to find.
Glass houses an’ all.
Pedro, Bolt and Blair’s blogs are News Ltd properties, News have announced that they will be moving some content behind a paywall, I would be amazed if News did not try to use the popularity of Tim and Andrew to turn their readers into paying customers.
Perhaps I missed the nuance in this post of Tim’s, but it didn’t appear to me to have much comment. Besides which, I don’t think that being a commentator, as opposed to a reporter, requires any less commitment to accuracy.
“Tim is taking the piss, not making a serious point so why should be be attacked for making a joke?”
You can be funny AND correct, Iain.
“But Its such a non story Dave, Tim is taking the piss, not making a serious point so why should be be attacked for making a joke?”
Having observed Blair over many years (despite many of my friends warning me that if I did that I’d go blind) this is the classic Blair approach (supported and excused by his acolytes) of, when he’s challenged, cornered or brought to book, he plays the “come on you guys, lighten up! Didn’t you get I was joking, jeez youse lot are so lacking in perception and understanding of my nuances”.
There is no joke. He presents it as news and gets it wrong. It should have been avoided.
Iian and Pedro
This is Dog Whistling pure and simple, if he was genuine he would have pulled the original story and comments and published the truth in it’s place.
Dave @18, I agree they might try and move Bolt’s blog behind a pay wall but I very much doubt they’d try that with Blair. Judging by the number of comments from readers his little tidbits of misinformation attract, unless his moderators are savagely culling comments, he is only getting a small fraction of the traffic Bolt attracts.
The thing that surprised me about his migration of his old blog to a Ltd News website was that by my reckoning well over 50% of his readers were North American neo-conservatives, hardly an audience that The Daily Tele needed or wanted. I mean I understand why he did it. For the money they obviously offered. But since his blog’s move and with Ltd News’ requirement of comment moderating, it appears a large proportion of his former readers have flown elsewhere and he doesn’t appear to have managed to attract much of an audience from those who read the Daily Terror (even with a highlighted link with his mugshot on the Terror’s homepage). In fact a from a quick perusal of his site it seems that his few regular commentors appear to be the few left that followed him to the Terror from his old blog. Since most of them are from North America (a large part of the reason I think Tim posts a lot of his blog material late at night and in the early morning hours), I doubt they’d want to buy a subscription to the Daily Terror’s website just to access Tim’s content.
I wouldn’t agree with that, surlysimon – and if he did so, I suspect some people would be criticising tim for trying to make his “oops” disappear.
An update correcting the record is appropriate, although I find the use of the word “Good” a bit strange – it makes it sound as though tim is pleased the WWF has defended itself to his satisfaction rather than acknowledging they didn’t deserve the accusation in the first place.
Tobias
I am not saying he should simply remove, but that a new post explaining that he had made a mistake and wished now to correct it would be more appropriate, to simply add an “update” allways seems to me to make light of a mistake. It smacks of “oh I made an oops, but carry on as if nothing had happened” We have all seen how when one of these posts is updated some comenters still carry on as if it hadn’t been corrected. This goes to the heart of the way Blogs and the internet can create myths.
Don’t you get it Tobias? WWF only scrambled together a dubious apology after pressure from his blog.
@ Josh – I never thought about it like that. Interesting.
Today it actually is a developing story.
There are a couple more updates on the original post from Tim, linking to reports which suggest the ad was approved by WWF Brazil after all. The latest WWF press release suggests this isn’t entirely accurate:
“Pedro, Bolt and Blair’s blogs are News Ltd properties, News have announced that they will be moving some content behind a paywall, I would be amazed if News did not try to use the popularity of Tim and Andrew to turn their readers into paying customers.”
Personally, I think Blair would love to have his blog away from the News Ltd site. And as for Bolt, I am sure he has enough clout to dictate exactly what becomes of his.
But it is highly doubtful blogs would be considered payable content. Traditionally no one pays to read blogs and they form no part of a traditional newspaper. Bolt’s column would probably have to be dropped from the blog, which is a fair concession.
The point remains, if a blog has the odd inaccurancy, such is life. It has about as much bearing on News’ proposed paywall or its integrity as Woolworths advertising coffee at $14.99 and the next day saying they really meant $24.99.
Surly, surely you have noticed the exact same “update” tactic is employed by THIS blog?
Pedro
Hard to miss, and I think the same may apply, an genuine update, that is more information about a developing story is fine, but as a way of correcting a mistake I think it is not the best practice no matter who uses it.
Wait, has anyone any evidence of this ad ever being run? Isn’t the important thing to note here that the WWF did NOT view it as appropriate, even if some underling was stupid enough to commission it?
Jeremy, you don’t win an award for an ad that never appeared anywhere.
Pedro, the point here isn’t justifying or damning the WWF, that’s a matter for another time.
What remains true, regardless of what developments occur in this story, is that Tim’s initial post failed to include the WWF denial that was in wide circulation before he published.
Dave, the POINT here is Jeremy asking is there any evidence of the ad being run. I told him, “you don’t win an award for an ad that never appeared anywhere.”
Now how you got “justifying or damning” the WWF out of THAT is beyond me.